29 NOVEMBER 1924, Page 13

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—With reference to the

letter from your correspondent " T.", in the Spectator of November 22nd, I should like to make two general remarks.

First, " that it is a subject for congratulation that our new Prime Minister is not only an Englishman but a typical Englishman." Mr. Stanley Baldwin is not wholly an Englishman in the sense spoken of by your correspondent. His revered mother was Scotch, a daughter of an eminent Scotch Presbyterian Minister in the North of England, the Rev. George MacDonald. All good men know what they owe to the power and character of their mother. It does not follow that to sustain the sentiments of the English people one must be a pure born Englishman.

One of the greatest addresses delivered in recent years, which will pass through time as a standard speech, was that delivered at the Festival Dinner of the Royal Society of St. George on April 23rd, 1920, " England and the English," by Rudyard Kipling, whose mother was another daughter of the said Rev. George MacDonald. Perhaps it is not out of place to add that two other daughters of this distinguished Scottish house became mothers of two typical Englishmen, Sir Edward Burne-Jones and Sir Edward John Poynter.

Second, " that for some psychological reason the Scottish Rulers of Great Britain, Kings or Prime Ministers from James I. to Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, have rarely appreciated the Englishman's ingrained dislike of foreign dictation." The fundamental tenets of the Stuart Dynasty were to attain to the position of absolute Sovereigns and to establish Popery in the land. Any influence that this Dynasty may have had in Scotland has been as dead as the dodo for centuries. The Prime Ministers who were Scottish Rulers of Great Britain since 1806 were the following : Lord Aberdeen, Mr. Gladstone, Lord Rosebery, Lord Balfour, Sir Henry Campbell-Banner- man, Mr. Bonar Law ; and it would require some psychological reasoning to prove that any of these Prime Ministers did not appreciate the Englishman's ingrained dislike of foreign dic- tation. It is absurd to associate Mr. Ramsay MacDonald with any one of them. Scotland took its share in hurling him from power.—I am, Sir, &c.,

JOHN M. MACLEOD.

4 Park Circus Place, Glasgow.