RESIDUARY SCOTCH PATRIOTISM.
AST week there was held in Edinburgh a "National Con- ventiou," which declared in favour of the creation of a State Department for Scotland, but to which, rather ominously, Glasgow, by far the most important municipality to the north of the Border, declined to send representatives. Yesterday, Scotchmen all over the world were engaged in commemorating the birth of their greatest poet, who, when "the thoughtless follies" that "laid him low and stained his name" have been forgotten, or have become a halo of legend round his head, will, no doubt, be canonised as St. Robert, the true Patron Saint of modern Scotland. The two events happening in succession draw attention to the difference between the Scottish patriotism that, not superficial and parochial, is secondary and objective, and that other Scotch patriotism which, being subjective, is real and permanent. The Burns worship which gives to the 25th of January its distinction in the calendar, unites energetic Scotchmen of all classes and professions, and leads to an outburst of specially Scotch feeling as nothing else now-a-days does. Yet the pushing, hard-headed, and successful men of business who meet on that day and lose individuality in frater- nity, much as did Tam o' Shanter and his " drouthy crony," cannot be supposed to be moved altogether by the tragedy of Burns's life, or by the rush and richness of his humour, or even by what Mr. Arnold so admirably terms "his overwhelming sense of the pathos of things, of the pathos of human nature, the pathos also of non-human nature." Nor do such honour Burns entirely or even mainly because he was the author of "Had we never loved sae blindly," or because he taught that "the heart's aye the part aye that maks us richt or wrang," still less because he dreamed of a day when "man to man, the warld ow're, shall brithers be, an' a' that." It is less the poet of Humanity and Nature, who entered into the hearts and the humours of "The Jolly Beggars," and identified himself in spirit with the daisy and the mouse and the wounded hare, that they admire, than the robust moralist who, like Samuel John- son, recommended men to "gather gear by every wile that's justified by honour," who held that "prudent, cautions self- control is wisdom's root," who preached a worldliness as thorough-going as Balthasar Gracian's :—
"Conceal yoursel' as weel's ye can Fran critical dissection,
Bat keek thro' ev'ry other man Wi' sharpen'd, sly inspection."
Burns knew and could run up the whole gamut of the Scotch nature. His philosophy of life is freer, richer, less in the air than that of Carlyle, his only possible rival for the suffrages of his countrymen. It is for this reason that he is still the centre and rallying-point of the profoundest Scotch sentiment and the most genuine Scotch patriotism of the time.
But must not the sole patriotism that is now left to Scotland be essentially subjective, rather than objective, a patriotism not so much of "national institutions" as of national character- istics P One hears, indeed, a good deal in these days of the necessity for defending what are styled Scotch national institutions, for preserving the Scotch Law, the Scotch Church
(in the wide Presbyterian sense), and the Scotch Teaching. There is no real danger, however, of what is really good in these
" institutions " being destroyed. If any tendency has manifested itself in Scotland towards Anglicising them, it is simply another proof that Scotch patriotism is subjective, in the sense of pre- ferring substance to form. At the most, it means that en- lightened Scotchmen do not scruple to borrow what is really good from any quarter. Nor is there any reason why they should scruple, for a counter-process is going on on this side of the Tweed. Mr. Mundella has just been singing at Clapham the praises of Scotch public (not elementary) schools and teachers, and perhaps there is no " institution " so truly Scotch and democratic as the public school, open to child- ren of all classes. Yet no attempt is being made to Anglicise it ; on the contrary, it is the ideal which English educational reformers are endeavouring to attain. Even the modern English University resembles Edinburgh much more closely than it resembles Oxford. The Scotchmen who lament or complain of the Anglicising that prevails on their side of the Border, should bear in mind the Scotticising that goes on here.
Professor Seeley, in his "Expansion of England," says that the legislative Union of England and Scotland "marks the beginning of modern Scottish history, just as the Armada marks that of modern English history. It is the en- trance of Scotland into the competition for the New World. No nation has since, in proportion to its numbers, reaped so much profit from the New World as the Scotch." This is true, and that it is true is the best testimony that could be given to the specially subjective character of modern .Scotch patriotism. It was the characteristics of the Scotch people, not high political arrangements, that made the Union of the two countries an honourable marriage, not the subjection .of a weak country by a stronger. These characteristics had been called forth and strengthened by an unparalleled struggle against poverty, against religious persecution, against the grinding tyranny of the most rapacious nobility that ever cursed a country. Such happiness as the Scotch people, in the 'large sense, had before the Union was of necessity moral, not material. Knox had taught them the value of freedom and equality, based on religion, and he had provided 'the machinery for supplying at a cheap rate that know- 'ledge which, in the long-run, is power. The Union gave Scotchmen peace, and scope for the exercise of their talents ,and disciplined virtues. They became, in fact, a nation of honourable adventurers. They not only prospered at home, but they successfully invaded England, and established Greater Scotlands beyond the seas. The Scotch are still the same. Burns's poems are, indeed, the solace, the vade-mecum, the ethical " ready-reckoner " of honourable Scotch adven- turers of all sorts and on all scales. Hence the universality of his worship, hence the recognition of him as the true ,successor to John Knox in the hearts and the heads of his countrymen.
Scotch patriotism of the kind that does not show itself in hearty sotion with England must now, indeed, take the form of hero-worship. For now that Edinburgh and Glasgow are at the ear of London, Scotland and England are bound in time .to melt into each other; and even "national institutions" on both aides of the Tweed would undergo modification, though -the supervision of Scotch administration were removed from Downing Street to Holyrood to-morrow. The Midlothian cam- paign was, in a sense, the greatest demonstration of true Scotch -patriotism since the Union. The triumph of Mr. Gladstone was the triumph of the best Scotch characteristics, of which he is the incarnation. And at the bottom of this carious patriotic pother in Edinburgh, raising it somewhat above the level of provincial impatience with the present rate of legislative pro- gress, there is, obviously, a desire on the part of a large number of Scotchmen that that very clever young Peer, Lord Rosebery, should have an opportunity of showing his political capacity to more purpose than in making humorous after-dinner speeches. Were he on his return from Australia to enter the Cabinet as _Lord Privy Seal, it would be tolerably safe to bet Mr. Gladstone's ten to one that the movement for giving Scot- land a Cabinet Minister would collapse in a few months. Scotch patriotism, we repeat, can manifest itself in no better way than in "raising" able Scotchmen for the general service of the State.
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