ASPECTS OF ENGLAND
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—It was a sound instinct that caused you to preface your series of articles on " Aspects of England " with an apologetic note, but your note only serves to betray an uneasy editorial conscience without doing anything to satisfy your Scottish readers. A great deal of what is said in the articles is wholly inapplicable to Scotsmen, and is therefore rightly placed under an English caption, but your aim is apparently to treat Great Britain as a historical and spiritual unity, and to apply to the supposed unity the name of " England." On the political side this is a violation of the Act of Union of 1707, but as that historic document is no longer treated seriously by the British Government and Parliament, that matters little in comparison with the violation of the national personality of Scotland. There is a subtle imperialism of the worst kind implicit in the standpoint of the articles as a series, and it becomes explicit in your introductory apologetic sentence : " The great majority of the people of Britain, and even of the United Kingdom, are in fact English." It is an indisputable fact that the people of Scotland are overwhelmingly non- English by every reasonable test or standard, and no attempt to lump Scottish history and thought and character with those of England under the English name can ever produce anything but a travesty of facts and lead to misleading conclusions.
—Yours, &C., WALTER MURIL&Y. The Manse, Torrance, Glasgow.
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