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The establishment of the
Presbyterian Church of Scotland at the Revolution placed the schools under
the supervision of the Presbytery within whose bounds they were situated.
All schoolmasters were required to sign the Confession of Faith as a
condition of holding their office, and in 1706 the ministers were enjoined
by the General Assembly to visit and examine all public schools within their
Presbyteries at least twice a year. This ecclesiastical supervision obtained
throughout the century, though there were occasional attempts on the part of
schoolmasters to evade the obligation to sign the Confession and of Town
Councils to dispute the right of visitation by Presbyteries of the burgh
schools without their concurrence. The tendency towards the end of it was to
question and curtail the jurisdiction of the Presbyteries to the extent of
allowing an appeal to the ciivil courts against the
decisions. Their zeal was, however, not confined to keeping an alert eye on
the religious views of the schoolmaster and on the instruction of their
pupils in the Catechism. They strove with laudable perseverance to bring
into operation the law of 1696 directing the establishment of a school in
every parish, which heritors were only too ready to neglect. Their efforts
were not very successful and a large proportion of the population in many
Lowland parishes could not read or write. The state of education was far
worse in the Highlands, though the Society for the Propagation of Christian
Knowledge strove to provide at least religious instruction in the remoter
districts, and the church had established 109 parish schools in the
Highlands by the year 1732. Distance from the school was one of the
difficulties in educating the dwellers of the Highland glens, and even at
the end of the century a very large percentage of the people were still
illiterate. Hence the old custom in both Highlands and Lowlands of reading
the Psalms to be sung line by line in order that the people might join in
the singing. Though illiterate the people in the Lowlands were not so
ignorant as one might infer from the imperfections of elementary education.
They learned a great deal from the services which it was obligatory to
attend and were well drilled in the Catechism by the ministers who held
regular visitations for catechising their flock. Their knowledge at least of
divinity of the old fashioned orthodox type was by no means contemptible,
and many who could neither read nor write could, in their own narrow
fashion, expatiate with no mean force on the fundamentals.
On the
whole, however, popular education throughout the century was at a low level.
The schoolmasters were miserably paid, the school was often but a wretched
hovel which also served as the poor master's dwelling. Many of them lived
their strenuous lives on the verge of starvation owing to the niggardliness
of Town Councils and heritors, whose sense of the value of education,
measured by the means they provided to maintain it, was lamentably
deficient. It is strange to read that the pittance allowed the schoolmaster
as salary was eked out, not only by small quarterly fees, but from the
proceeds of cock-fighting on Fastern's E'en, when
the boys brought their cocks to the schoolroom, paid the master a trifle for
the right to pit them against each other, and in addition left the dead
birds as a perquisite of his office. Nevertheless in not a few of these
schools sterling work was done in return for this pitiful remuneration. From
many of them "the lad of pairts" made his way to the University and some to
distinction in the professions. Some of these schoolmasters themselves, like
Thomas Ruddiman, attained to distinction in learning and literature. Very
noteworthy is the democratic spirit which embraced the children of all
classes in a common instruction, the son of the laird sitting beside the son
of the farmer and the cottar on the same bench.
The first
quarter of the century is rather a dreary period in the history of the
Scottish Universities. The higher education had suffered from the political
and ecclesiastical turmoil of the previous century. The system in vogue by
which the "regent" or professor taught to his students all the subjects
necessary to a degree was not favourable to distinction or even proficiency
in any one subject on the part of the professor. This objectionable system
was discarded at Edinburgh in 1708,
at Glasgow in 1727. At
St Andrews it lingered till near the middle of the century and at King's
College, Aberdeen, till the end of it. The instruction was given in Latin,
in which the student had been well drilled in the Grammar Schools, and it
was only in the second quarter of the century that English began to take its
place as the medium of lecturing. The students who could afford it lived in
rooms within the colleges where a strict discipline, aggravated by exacting
religious exercises, prevailed, with the result that outside residence was
greatly preferred. The supervision, especially on Sunday, when they had to
go twice to church, and were examined afterwards on their knowledge of the
sermon and dared not go out for recreation, was indeed a burden grievous to
be borne. Most of them were as a rule lads of from
13 to 15
and careful supervision was advisable in view of their extreme youth.
Excessive regulation was, however, bad educationally and in the second half
of the century, under the humanising influence of moderatism, it was going
out of fashion.
Philosophy and physics were obligatory for a degree in Arts and they were
still taught in the old scholastic fashion in the early part of the century.
Gradually, however, as the " regent-ing " system disappeared, more competent
teachers and new methods of teaching brought a new life into the class rooms
and raised the Universities out of the rut of mediocrity. A number of chairs
in law and medicine, which had hitherto been studied in Holland or France by
the more reputable practitioners, were founded, and the number of students
at Edinburgh and Glasgow was more than doubled during the second half of the
century, Edinburgh having 1,000
in 1800 and Glasgow
800 in 1792.
At Edinburgh the stately building designed by Adam was begun in
1789 to replace the humbler tenement of an
earlier time. This new life may be said to date from the advent of the
mathematician Colin McLaurin—a worthy successor of the three Gregorys —at
Edinburgh in 1735, and
of the philosopher Francis Hutcheson at Glasgow in
1730. Hutcheson's lectures on Philosophy, which
were delivered in English, "constituted," says his recent biographer,
Professor Scott, "a revolution in academic teaching." He discarded the old
text books and the old scholastic method and gave his students the benefit
of his own inspiring thought. Among those who conferred distinction on
themselves and the Universities as scholars or men of science were Principal
Robertson, Adam Ferguson, Adam Smith, Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart, John
Robison, Joseph Black, the three Munros, John and James Gregory, William
Cullen, Hugh Blair, and Robert Simson. It would be easy to enlarge the list
by including many names of men of varying degree of eminence in order to
emphasise the great advance made since the seventeenth century by the
Universities as centres of a vigorous intellectual life. This advance is in
truth as remarkable as that observable in the industrial sphere. The
intellectual and moral energy, which had expended itself in the political
and ecclesiastical struggles of the preceding century, now found scope in
literary and scientific pursuits and completely redeemed Scotland from the
general intellectual mediocrity of that century.
Not only
within, but outside the Universities there was a notable rise in culture. In
the society of the Capital and the ^University towns the leaver of an actwe
intellectual life was at work throughout the latter half of the century. The
literati of Edinburgh, and Glasgow, and Aberdeen could compare favourably
with those of London or any other European capital, and the reputation and
influence of some of them were not confined to this side of the Border or
even of the Channel. The Scottish intellect in the eighteenth century earned
the enthusiastic appreciation of Mr Buckle who, after'emptying the vials of
his wrath and also of his prejudice on the heads of the Scottish divines of
the seventeenth, had only admiration for " the eminent and enterprising
thinkers (of the eighteenth) whose genius lighted up every department of
knowledge and whose minds, fresh and vigorous as the morning, opened for
themselves a new career, and secured for themselves a high place in the
annals of European intellect." Hume influenced in a powerful degree the
thought of the Continent as well as of his native land, though he failed to
obtain the chair of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh. Adam Smith may be said to
have created the science of Political Economy, Hutton that of Geology.
Besides these there was a large number of highly cultured men in the
professions—lawyers like Monboddo, Kames, and Henry Erskine; and ministers
like John Erskine, Alexander Webster, Robert Wallace, and Jupiter Carlyle.
Literature in the stricter sense found in Allan Ramsay and Robert Fergusson
precursors of Robert Burns, the peerless lyric poet, in whose muse
vernacular Scottish poetry attained its perfection and its climax. His songs
alone would have made him immortal. Remarkable is the bevy of ladies who
also excelled, on a limited scale, as song writers. Mrs Cockburn, Miss
Elliot, Joanna Baillie, Lady Anne Lindsay, Lady Nairne gave voice alike to
the pathos and the humour of Scottish life, high and humble, in such gems as
"Auld Robin Gray," "The Flowers of the Forest," "The Land o' the Leal," "The
Auld Hoose," and "The Laird o' Cockpen." Jacobitism redeemed its exaggerated
king-worship by the touching devotion of such outpourings of its loyalty as
"Flora MacDonald's Lament." The romantic note also found expression in James
Macpherson's Fingal and Temora, which professed to discover to a responsive
age the authentic remains of the ancient Gaelic
muse. These Ossianic poems were largely the composition of their would-be
discoverer, whilst embodying genuine fragments of traditional poetry and
reflecting with considerable success the mystic Celtic spirit. But they
caught on in spite of hostile critics like Dr Johnson, who was stoutly
opposed by Dr Blair, and they gave a powerful impulse to the Romantic
movement in European literature. Music, both vocal and instrumental, had
many amateur devotees in Edinburgh, who performed at the concerts given in
St Cecilia's Hall in the Cowgate, and in 1764 a playhouse was licensed in
the Capital where the citizens might gratify their taste for the drama
without fear of the law and the outcry of the Kirk against such a satanic
innovation. Allan Ramsay, bookseller as well as poet and wigmaker, did much
for the wider diffusion of culture by starting a circulating library in
1726, which provided, in spite of the ecclesiastical censor, the latest
literature from London. Even among the country people the old taste for
edifying works of divinity was beginning to relax and in place of Peden's
Prophecies,
or Rutherford's
Letters, or Boston's
Fourfold State, the coarse popular chap books of
a Dugal Graham were being read at many a cottage fireside. Hundreds of
thousands of these popular books were being sold about 1770, though,
unfortunately, the widespread demand by no means denoted a growing
refinement of popular taste.
In
philosophy, political science, and literature, in particular, Scotland in
the second half of the eighteenth century contributed what may fairly be
termed an epoch-making quota to the intellectual life of the age. In respect
of its quality and its influence, the achievement of Hume, Adam Smith, and
Burns in their respective spheres takes a place of the first rank in the
history of European culture. From 1739, when he published his
Treatise of Human Nature,
till his death in 1776, Hume steadily added to his reputation as a thinker
by a series of philosophical works, including the
Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding,
the Enquiry
Concerning the Principles of Morals, and the
Natural History of Religion, besides his
History of England and a series of Essays on
Politics and Ethics. In his recent book on
English Philosophers and Schools of Philosophy
Professor Seth pronounces him "the greatest English philosopher," though his
system of thought has bred many critics and antagonists. He was what is
termed an empiricist in philosophy. In other words, he not only based all
knowledge on experience, but held that the mind itself is " but a bundle of
different conceptions." His system accordingly tends to scepticism, to shake
belief in the identity, the reality of the perceiving self, apart from its
perceptions, and, when applied to revealed religion, to strike at the
foundations of received beliefs. But it was acutely and powerfully reasoned
and exercised a decisive influence by quickening the thought of men like
Reid, and especially Kant and Hegel, who elaborated their antagonistic
systems under his stimulating influence. In this respect his influence on
the development of modern thought was far-reaching.
The germ
of Adam Smith's epoch-making work as an economist is to be found in the
lectures on Justice
and Police, which he delivered whilst Professor
of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow University, and which were only lately
discovered and published. These lectures afford convincing proof that he had
thought out the main principles of his more mature work on
The Wealth of Nations independently of the French
writers from whom he was long believed to have borrowed them. They were
delivered long before he had met Quesnay and Turgot in France. It was,
however, during a two years' sojourn in France in 1765-66, where he took the
opportunity of discussing economic problems with these distinguished
economists, that he began to write the
Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations,
which he gave to the world in 1776. In it he sought to undermine the
Mercantile or Protective system which was then and had long been in vogue,
and to demonstrate that freedom of trade and industry was the true way to
develop both. Under the Mercantile system the chief object of the State was
conceived to be the maintenance of its power for defence and offence against
other States which were regarded as its rivals for power. Hence the
necessity of amassing treasure which provides the sinews of war, of
restricting by navigation laws its trade to its own shipping, which provides
a strong navy, of fostering population which
provides {^strong army. The idea was that, in order to maintain itself
against its rivals and grow wealthy and powerful, it must protect itself by
restriction of trade and industry in its own interest. The principle, in
common language, was to better yourself by beggaring your neighbour, since
the gain of other nations is so much loss to one's own. In place of this
system Smith advocated one based on freedom of trade. National wealth, he
contends, does not consist in the amount of national treasure, but in
productive labour. An indispensable condition of production is liberty,
"leaving every man free, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice,
to pursue his own interest in his own way." The exercise of this liberty
benefits industry by giving scope for man's labour. Therefore all the
artificial restrictions of industry in the form of protective devices (close
corporations or guilds, bounties, monopolies) in vogue under the Mercantile
system are injurious to industry by hampering production. Equally beneficial
is the exercise of liberty in the domain of commerce, whether internal or
foreign. Whatever tends to favour the free exchange of commodities only
benefits the people. In the domain of foreign commerce in particular, the
less restriction the better. The idea that wealth consists in treasure and
that, therefore, a nation must export more than it imports in order to have
a favourable balance in money as the result of its trade is false. If
foreign trade increases production it increases wealth apart altogether from
a favourable money balance. But it will not increase production if a nation
acts on the principle of trying to keep down the commerce and industry of
other nations on the assumption of a mistaken self interest. Self interest
will really derive more advantage from the prosperity of these nations,
because their prosperity will increase their power of buying from others
what they do not produce. Therefore the less restriction, the greater
freedom, the better. Mutual self interest consists in making international
trade as free and consequently as active as possible. The work was a direct
challenge to prevailing economic opinion and practice. But it made a
powerful impression on the economic thought of the time and exercised a
marked influence on the fiscal policy of the country, as is shown by the
commercial treaty in free trade direction
concluded by Pitt with France in 1786. Some of its contentions and
conclusions have been challenged and improved on by later economic writers
like Bastiat. There came in the second half of the nineteenth century a
strong reaction against the competitive spirit in industry, which his system
tended to foster, in the direction of subordinating the interest of the
individual to that of the community in the social and economic sphere. But
in the main its practical influence has lasted. The work was, in fact, not a
mere chain of reasoning on economic principles. This reasoning was enriched
and strengthened by the historic data on which its author liberally drew to
illustrate and enforce it. And it not only developed and advocated a new
theory. It sought both to show a better way of increasing national
prosperity and with it the material welfare of the people and to attain a
better international system, based on the mutual interest of the nations.
The muse
of Robert Burns whose short, if meteoric career as poet began in 1786, when
he ventured to publish a first collection of poems, seldom goes far afield,
though it ere long carried his fame the wide world over. It is concerned
largely with himself, with the scenery amid which he lived, the people among
whom he dwelt. His poetry is the man as he toiled, and loved, and suffered;
caroused, and erred, and repented; dreamed, and aspired, and pitied. It is
instinct with life in 'all its phases—grave and gay, tragic and comic, high
and low, good and bad, as the poet experienced and saw it. Just because he
was so alive himself, he has a keen eye for the unreal—for pretension,
hypocrisy, quackery, and cant— and withers it in the cutting blast of his
satire. Witness "Death and Dr Hornbook." He
cannot refrain from exercising it even on the Kirk and its narrow Calvinist
creed, as in "Holy Willie's Prayer," "The Holy Fair," "The
Kirk's Alarm," and "The Twa Herds." Of
course he exaggerates the failings of ministers and creeds, as satire, to be
effective, must do, and his own failings were certainly fitted to draw on
him the attention of the censor in the pulpit. Nevertheless there was
material enough for the satirist to work on in the formalism and hypocrisy
in which conventional religion was too apt to deck
itself, and the satirist's blast did good in helping to
clear the religious atmosphere of his time. It ought to be remembered, too,
that, with all his failings, the satirist was a deeply religious man, as
"The Cottar's Saturday Night" and many other pieces, as well as his
deliberate statements on the subject in his letters to Mr Cunningham and Mrs
McLehose, prove. As a moralist he was, at his best, superlative, and no
better advice on the right conduct of life could be given to the young than
"The Epistle to a Young Friend." Such utterances are the best antidotes to
the unfortunate tendency, which he shared with his age, to glorify the
drinking habit, of which he finally became the tragic victim. Conviviality,
coupled with sobriety, was not the fashion in those days, and Burns'
influence undoubtedly helped to prolong the fashion, to the ruin of many
besides himself. Even here the moralist does not fail to utter a warning
note on occasion out of his own sad experience. Of the humour of which the
Scottish tongue and the Scottish temperament are capable, he is the peerless
medium in rhyme at least. What more inimitable than "Tam o' Shanter" and the
"Address to the Deil"? And who has pictured the social customs and joys of
the people, as in "Hallowe'en," with such spirit and masterly simplicity?
Peerless, too, are the songs in which he celebrates the passion which he
could not always control, but to which he gave the sweetest and finest
expression in such lyrics as "My Nannie's Awa," "Green grow the Rashes,"
"Corn Rigs are Bonnie," "Afton Water," and many more. Pity that these and
other lyric gems of the Scottish muse are so little appreciated by our boys
and girls, our young men and maidens, who all too generally prefer the
rubbish of the music hall to the treasures of the bards of former days, even
of the chief of them. |
