Search just our sites by using our customised search engine

Unique Cottages | Electric Scotland's Classified Directory

Click here to get a Printer Friendly PageSmiley

The Scot in British North America
Introduction


Love thou thy land, with love far-brought
From out the storied Past, and used
Within the Present, but transfused
Thro’ future time by power of thought.

Make knowledge circle with the winds;
But let her herald, Reverence, fly
Before her to whatever sky
Bear send of men and growth of minds.
- Tennyson

Our ain native land! Our ain native land!
There’s a charm in the words that we a’ understand,
That flings o’er the bosom the power of a spell,
And makes us love mair what we a’ love so well.
The heart may have feelings it canna conceal,
As the mind has the thoughts that nae words can reveal,
But alike be the feelings and thoughts can command
Who names but the name o’ our ain native land.
- Henry Scott Riddell

In the general upheaval of traditional ideas on most subjects of human concern, it seems to have become at least debateable, whether patriotism ought any longer to be reputed a virtue. It is many years since every other estimable disposition – even to love, benevolence, sympathy and self-sacrifice – was resolved into selfishness, "enlightened" or the reverse, and it would have been idle to expect that love of country should escape the same fate. But not even content with their ultimate analysis of the source of all virtue, the moral chemistry in vogue seeks to deprive man’s noblest thoughts and affections of their essential dignity and worth. In the hands of a perverse and spurious alchemy, the gold has become dim and the most fine gold changed - transmuted, in fact, into the basest dross. Whether there yet remains any residuum of the old-fashioned conceptions of right and wrong appears questionable; and to Falstaff’s query, "Is there no virtue extant?" we ought probably to reply, not only that there is none, but that it is very doubtful whether such a thing ever existed. It is selfishness, in this view, that prompts a mother to doat upon her child, a husband to love and cherish a wife - that is his own wife - or a friend to feel affection for his friend; and, since the nation is merely a widening of the circle of kin and acquaintance, patriotism is intensely selfish, because it extends the empire of selfishness over a larger area. It is the perfection of self-denying virtue to be cosmopolitan; and the truly good man must approve himself "the friend of every country but his own" - a citizen of the world, or like Anacharsis Clootz, at the bar of the Convention, an "ambassador of the human race."

Certainly there are national prejudices and conceits, which vulgarly pass under the name of patriotism, as most men will readily admit when they are dealing with the faults and foibles of alien peoples. The pride of country which fires an Englishman is offensive to the Frank or the German; and the poor Scot is proverbially sneered at by the Southron as exclusive and "clannish" - the last epithet being an effectual extinguisher to Caledonian assurance. That the virtue, for such we maintain that it is, may be perverted and made offensive by jealous pride and ignorant self-assertion might have been anticipated. All our best impulses and instincts seem liable to abuse in proportion as they are good, and noble in themselves; and, as a matter of fact, they are constantly, and sometimes flagrantly, abused. But love of country - as our forbears used to praise and cherish it, and, nerved by its potent spirit, were ready to do and dare and die with cheerfulness and alacrity - is something nobler and more precious, because it springs from the purest and most healthful part of man - his affections. Much that history palms off upon the world as patriotism is merely a showy veneering over lust of power and territory, by which kings have profited at the expense of the people who became the sufferers and dupes; yet all the false sentiments, all the causeless quarrels and unjust warfare ever occasioned in this way, are but a feather in the balance when weighed against that true devotion to country which has fired men's zeal for liberty and independence, made great and noble states out of nought, raised the thoughts and ennobled the aspirations of the honest and earnest all over the earth. Patriotism and liberty are twin brothers; and wherever in the world the heart of a country has beaten time to the pulses of the one, it has always, in the end, claimed and vindicated its kinship with the other. The very name and reality of freedom are associated in history with those nations which have been intensely patriotic. If one were asked to point out the countries which have struggled the hardest for independence and liberty, he would name Greece, old Rome, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, England, and last, though not least, stern and rugged "auld Scotia."

So far as the progress of knowledge, the expansion of commerce and the interchange of thoughts, sympathies and courtesies have enabled nations to draw more closely together, to view one another's faults, virtues and idiosyncracies with a less jaundiced vision, and a more appreciative temper, patriotism has been chastened and purified; but the world cannot yet afford to do without it. The true lover of his own country, wherever it may lie, will feel more surely, and cherish more ardently on that account, the real and substantial brotherhood of man. As he who loves his own will prove the best citizen; so, as the circle of view widens, the ardour of patriotism will glow into affection for the race. The charity which begins at home and ends there is not of the most estimable type; yet it seems more likely to embrace all human kind than that which begins nowhere, or is dissipated at the antipodes where it will lie of little or no use to man, beast or thing. It is Burns, the poet and patriot of Scotland, who can sing with fervid enthusiasm and hope:

"Then let us pray, that come it may,
As come it will, for a' that;.
That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth
May bear the gree, and a' that;
For a' that, and a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that,
That man to man, the warld o'er,
Shall brithers be for a' that."

Attachment to one’s native land is not a novel or factitious form of affection. In all languages, from the dawn of literature to the chanting of Der Wacht am Rhein under the walls of Paris, it has been inculcated as a duty and extolled as a virtue. It is the bond which knits together the family units which first made up the clan, sept or tribe, and thereafter the nation or empire; the cement which binds society by the cohesive power of affection; the true antidote to absorption in self and its immediate surroundings, the all-powerful motive power which prompts to heroic deeds of noble daring and cheerful self-abnegation and self-sacrifice. Heroism sprang from love of country, and all that is great and glorious in human history, as distinguished from the vain glamour of its ambitions and its crimes, are distinctly traceable to patriotic aspiration. Even before the formation of nationalities properly so called, pride in the value and worth of ancestry, and a desire to emulate and surpass the noble deeds of "the fathers," constituted patriotism in the germ. Even now, as Mr. Froude has remarked, whilst the optimist is fond of speaking irreverently of his "barbarian ancestors," the pessimist is ever urging that our predecessors "had more of wit and wisdom than we." The golden age of purity, of matchless beauty, and dauntless prowess is far back in the mists of a primaeval age, when "there were giants in those days." In Homer, a hero thought it the best he could say for himself and his fellow heroes, "We boast ourselves to be better than our fathers"; and when the despairing prophet of Israel laid himself down in the wilderness, a day's journey from Beer-sheba, "and requested for himself that he might die," his plaintive wail found articulate form in the touching words: "It is enough; now O Lord take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers." Thus the record of doughty deeds, lofty thoughts or, worthy lives has, in all ages and all countries, proved the spur to noble and earnest men, whether it has aroused them to heroism, or stung them with reproach.

Every civilized nation has such a history in which there is written much to stimulate courage, virtue, and vigorous effort, and, not a little to warn, to humiliate and sadden the proudest and most complacent patriot. It was to perpetuate the fame of native valour and heroism for all time to come, that literature, first as minstrelsy, and then as rude chronicling, shed so early its genial and fructifying radiance upon the earth. The rhapsody, the ballad, the epic, the tragedy, the poetic tales of heroism, which every land accumulated at the dawn of its historic day, were at once the offspring and the prolific ancestry of patriotic pride and patriotic impulse all the world over. Admiration for the valour of individual champions or hosts was succeeded by love of country for its own sake - for what it had been and for what it had achieved; and this, as in the normal exercise of all healthy affection, re-acted upon the patriot, and nerved him to strive his hardest, dare his boldest, defy danger, and welcome death, if only he could do something which might leave his country more glorious and free than he had found it. In the ancient poets, Greek and Latin, there is a fervent patriotism ever flowering into the brightest forms of expression. Thus with Euripides, it appears in "O my country I would that all who inhabit thee, loved thee as I do; then should we live a better life, and thou would'st suffer no harm;" and in Ovid: "I know, not by what sweet influence, the land of their birth draws all men; will not suffer them to be unmindful of it;" or, in higher strain and diviner words: "O Jerusalem! if I forget thee, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy." Thus sang the captive Judaean by the waters of Babylon, and the echo of that plaintive chord has touched the patriot and exile in every land where the Book of Psalms has been said or sung. The patriotic poetry of all nations is the very flower of literature - its real anthology, and whether in castle or hut, on the field of battle, in the forest, on the hills, in the cavern refuge of hunted heroism, or among "those afar that be upon the sea," it, more than any other strain of bard or minstrel, has roused the cheerless, spurred the flagging and sent out the brave to conquer or to die. Sir Philip Sydney is reported to have said that the reading of "Chevy Chase" stirred his soul like the blast of a war trumpet, and with all heroic spirits the poetry of patriotism has appealed, with wondrous potency, to the burning love of country and its fame, kindled inextinguishably in every honest human breast.

If, as the prevailing scientific philosophy insists, the bias of our nature, and its main features, moral and intellectual, as well as physical, are inherited - the result of influences working through an immeasurable past - surely of all the powers moulding the character, one of essential moment and surpassing value is that exerted by patriotism. Whatever its origin, the foundations of love for one's native land are laid broad and deep in the universal heart of humanity. It has flourished ever since "the first syllable of recorded time" was articulately spoken, and there is no nation under heaven in which its subtile energy has not been felt, or where the inspiring throb of its vivifying influence has not incited to nobler thoughts and higher deeds of chivalrous emprise. Men can no more escape from it than they can flee from themselves; like the air they breathe or the rays of the glorious sun, it encompasses them round about, at once the source of life, joy and healthful activity. Indeed, had not patriotism been so obviously essential to national progress, so natural and so beneficent in its influence, its value and reality would never have been questioned by philosophers. Love of paradox is at the bottom of most assaults upon cherished feelings, affections and aspirations; and the more vital and cogent these may be, the more violent and reckless are the crusades against them. The modern Don Quixote does not tilt at windmills which he mistakes for mailed knights; his opponents are a great deal too real for the weapons at his command and may safely defy these puny efforts to unhumanize them. A system which "sees men like trees walking" or as automata of some sort, and sees nothing more, is not of much practical account in the working human world of to-day.

It is an instinct in man, therefore, to love his country; and because it is natural, it is also seemly, wholesome, laudable and useful to cherish that affection. Humanity is far too wide and abstract a conception to gain any firm grasp upon the sympathies or affections. "Man is dear to man," no doubt as Wordsworth says; and the man of large and warm heart will no doubt exclaim with Terence, in the Self-tormentor, "I am a man, and deem nothing human beyond my concern;" but it requires some "touch of nature" to "make the whole world kin" - some story of helpless and hopeless suffering to evoke pity, some flagrant oppression and brutality to arouse indignation in lands and climes far removed from our own. The wrongs of Poland, Bulgaria, Italy, or Greece appeal vividly to the humanity within man's breast, and a famine or an inundation in India, China or Japan immediately commands earnest sympathy and generous self-sacrifice. But ordinarily speaking, the impression made upon men by the degradation and other misfortunes of people separated from us by the barriers of distance, language, manners and habits, is feeble and transient. The visible horizon is not more contracted than the circumference which encloses the field of powerful and effective sympathy. National vitality is strongest in small communities at first, and for the most part, persistently. Greece, England, Scotland, Holland and Switzerland are at once the countries which have struggled most for independence, enduring untold sufferings to secure and maintain it, and the nations also which have proved themselves the champions of liberty, the refuge for the exile and wanderer, without regard to country. In Germany, patriotism, which seemed well nigh extinct, was revived and burnt into the national heart during the war of Liberation, and has finally established itself definitively under the Emperor William and Otto von Bismarck. France suffered for many centuries from the lack or cohesiveness which kept its members asunder, The people of Normandy and Brittany despised the Poitevin; the Burgundian looked askance at the native of Auvergne or Provence; and the Parisian ridiculed and satirized all provincials without exception. One of Balzac's great points against Montaigne was his Gascon birth; for what good could come of a writer born "in the Barbary of Querey and Perigold?" The fatal effects of this looseness in the bond of nationality have been felt in all the misfortunes of France, and are even now traceable in the centralizing system which consigns all power and distinction, political, literary or social, to the custody of one great city.

Prof. Huxley has said, "Throw a stone into the sea, and there is a sense in which it is true that the wavelets which spread around it have an effect through all space and all time." It is also with every individual man or woman cast upon the tide of time. From the thinking, willing and acting self, and forth into infinite space and into eternity, the energies of personal existence move in concentric circles until they are dissipated - lost to human view - expanded into seeming nothingness and mere oblivion. It is so with our sympathies and affections. The "wretch who concentred all in self" has been held up to reprobation by Sir Walter Scott; and yet it is doubtful whether any man, however selfish, could either live or die wholly for himself. Strong within the sphere of relationship, love for our fellows originates in the affections of the family - that primal unit, out of which, in the opinion of Mr. Gladstone and others, springs the social state, with all its virtues and amenities. Thither may be traced, in germ, the love of country, developed in the ever widening range of affection, and speedily embracing in its generous warmth all who dwell in our own land, speaks its tongue, inherit its traditions, and share its characteristic tendencies. The irrefragable bonds of a common language, similar modes of thought and action, kindred hopes and aspirations, thus knit men together in the strongest and broadest union society has yet provided. Even the historical element alone, the sense of intercommunion through a common ancestry, which struggled, suffered and, in the issue, triumphed that they might be endowed with independence, freedom, strength and honesty of purpose, tends to stimulate men, by fostering a healthful and honest pride in what is the common appanage of the entire nation. But beyond the claims of patriotic affection, all grows vague and nebulous; the energy imparted by a glorious history is dissipated in the excursive maunderings of an objectless sentimentality; for what is not a subject of human interest fails to be an object of active human sympathy. The substance and purpose of benevolent affection fade and shadow off into those airy phantoms through which cosmopolitan philosophy breathes a spasmodic life - its own. Human attachments are limited, like bodily vision and all else that is human. Within reasonable bounds, our sympathies will not fail to assert their native power; surpass those boundaries, and the influence wanes and grows languid until, like the force of gravity, it vanishes or becomes intangible and inane, dispersed in vacancy too far away from the centre at which it sprang.

Man's affections, no matter how far they may reach, must have something palpable on which to expend themselves; their object must be definite, concrete and readily grasped within the circle of knowledge and acquaintanceship, or they must be wasted in quest of abstractions. "If a man love not his brother whom he hath seen," and yet affects to "love God whom he hath not seen," he is stigmatized by Divine authority as a liar. Similarly with what consistency can any one simulate devotion to the race, past, present and to come, when he refuses to love the land and the people peculiarly his own? Our disinterested virtues, if any such survive the ultimate analysis, are not so secure and stable in these days, as to need artificial volatilization. Patriotism may be sometimes overladen with parasitic growths that poison its vitality; if so, there is need of the pruning knife, not the axe. It is glorious to dwell upon the past of one's country; to live in fancy amongst the stirring deeds which have made its name illustrious amongst the nations and by which we are privileged to live in freedom, happiness and peace. The fair inheritance is ours, although the anguish, the toil and the pain were theirs who went before; they suffered and were strong, that we might reap the harvest. The thorny path was trodden through blood and tears, that we might enter upon the heritage to till and enjoy it. To us upon whom the ends of the world are come, generations long gone to their rest, have bequeathed the results of their industry and wrestling with powers terrestrial and infernal. The goodly possession lies around us everywhere, nay, it is within us, giving the impetus to honest exertion and elevated aims; why should it not be cherished with manly pride and satisfaction?

Moreover, let a man, so far as he may, abjure his country, repudiate his nationality, and turn his back upon the glorious scroll of its fame, forget what has been suffered and achieved by his ancestry and "forfeit the fair renown," handed down to him, it will avail nothing. Nature has stamped the national characteristics upon his mind and heart, perhaps on his form and features, and not even self-destruction can remove the indelible traces of all he would fain cast behind him. It is this persistence of national energy, to borrow a scientific phrase, which makes the formation of any country's peculiar type of character a study so valuable, especially in a new land, like ours, where much depends upon the moral, intellectual and physical fibre of the races contributing to the sum of its population. It has been urged by Mr. Mill, Sir Henry Maine and others that historical or ethical deductions from differences of race, and especially of related branches of the same race, are vain and illusory. That is no doubt true if we rely upon ethnic distinctions alone, without taking into account, the physical character of the country, its position relatively to adjacent peoples, hostile or friendly, and the general course of its history. At the same time, race and language are important factors in any estimate of a nation, provided only they do not assume undue predominance and pass for more than they are worth. The peculiar traits of character which we note in various peoples, the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Jews, the Teuton, the Celt in Scotland and Ireland, or the Anglo-Saxon in both, and in the English, strictly so called, are the net results of a vast number of acting, reacting and retroacting influences, almost always so complex and intricate as to defy unravelling. In modern times much has been done to clear the stage of cumbering theories, whose only merit was their ingenuity; and, if the philosophy of history is only yet in embryo, it seems at least to have shape and coherence as a branch of knowledge in the making.

Scotland and the Scottish people, perhaps, afford as compact and instructive a mass of material as the philosophical historian can desire. The country has, of late years, occupied a larger figure in English and foreign literature than it formerly did. No people concerning which we have abundant information, presents the student with so well-defined a history; no nation has produced a more salient and clear cut type of character than Scotland. Physically, considered in the rough, it is an eminently poor and sterile land; nature has been a stern and hard-tempered mother to her sons in "auld Scotia." She has given them nothing which they have not drawn from her rugged bosom, by constant painful and often fruitless toil; but her very parsimony has reared the Scottish nation up, as a hard-working, frugal, sturdy and honest race, eager to discharge the duties set before them honestly, fearlessly and well. Moreover, as if nature had not been grudging enough, Scotland has been, from beyond the dawn of authentic history, the prey of foes from all sides. From the rock-bound coast where Caithness bares its scarred and weather-beaten brow, crowned with island jewels, to the rough North Sea, down to the Mull of Galloway, Scotland, from the earliest days was harried and despoiled, through all its length and breadth by fierce invaders. At a far remote period in the past, Gothic rovers of some sort, Scandinavian or Teutonic, must have made the entire north and north-west their prey; then appeared the Irish Scots, and fresh Norse and Saxon visitors, and then over the whole scene the curtain of oblivion is thrown for four centuries. The Christianity of Columba and his island home had almost disappeared, when Kentigern or St. Mungo appeared in Strathclyde to raise anew the standard of the cross. Then came Saxon immigration from England; Norman cupidity was excited, and henceforward over the whole Border from the Humber to the Forth, and from Carlisle to the Clyde the raiders, plied their rough and ready warfare from either side, without regarding truce or pact between the courts at Scone or Holyrood and London. So late as the time of James V, the rule of might was the only one acknowledged by these rough troopers. That monarch had sent James Boyd to the castle of Murray of Philipphaugh, who had been particularly audacious, in order to command his allegiance. Quoth Boyd, according to the old ballad:

"The King of Scotland sent me here.
And, gude outlaw, I am sent to thee
I wad wot of whom ye hauld your landis,
Or, man, wha may thy master be."

Murray’s answer was fierce and defiant:

"The landis are mine!" the outlaw said,
"I ken nae king in Christentie;
Frae Soudron I this forest wan,
When the king nor his knights were not to see."

Neither these wild moss troopers, nor the Highlanders who levied toll on the northern Lowlands considered their exploits as anything dishonest or dishonourable. To them it was simply a natural right to make war and secure loot. Thus in Johnnie Armstrong, whom the king charges with treason and robbery, the borderer replies:

"Ye lied, ye lied, now, king," he says,
"Although a king and prince ye be!
For I've loved naething in my life,
I weel dare say but honesty.

"Save a fat horse, and a fair woman,
Twa bonnie dogs to kill a deir;
But England sould have found me meal and mault,
Gif I had lived this hundred yeir!"

Kinmount Willie, Auld Wat of Harden, and other names celebrated in the old ballad literature, will readily occur to the reader of Scott's "Border Minstrelsy," "Percy's Reliques," and kindred works.

Then followed the war of Independence, the heroic struggle under Wallace, "his country's saviour," as Burns terms him, with his signal victory at Stirling, and his unhappy defeat at Falkirk, the terribly heavy hand of Edward I., the establishment of Scottish nationality at Bannockburn, in 1314, ten years after the valiant Wallace gave up his life on Tower Hill. Following these memorable events there came the French alliance and Scottish participation in the Hundred Years' war. At home, after the chequered reigns of the Bruces, the Stuarts, foredoomed to disaster in England and Scotland both, were incessantly contending with the nobles or with England. At last we reach the flower of the race in beauty and craft, the unhappy Mary and the Reformation, the contest for presbytery and civil freedom against the Stuarts on the English throne, the Glencoe massacre after the Revolution, the Union and finally those last struggles of many centuries, the Jacobite uprisings of 1715 and 1745. Some of the more prominent features of this wild and eventful history must be examined more closely hereafter; meanwhile it is necessary to enquire what effects such a terrible and prolonged ordeal of sorrow and suffering must have entailed upon the Scottish people. It will be found that it has left many seams and scars upon the national character; but it will clearly appear also that that character has emerged from the fiery trial, purged and purified, and that if some of the less attractive traits, which are made so much of to the prejudice of Scotsmen, are due to that prolonged woe, the virtues which have made Scotland pre-eminently distinguished among the nations are traceable to the same source. The industry, the energy, the shrewdness, the probity, the caution, the enterprise, the noble daring, the frugality, the high sense of honour, the haughty pride and reserve, which have given to the Scot his place and renown in the world, far above any to be anticipated from his numbers or the importance of his rugged land, have all been hardly and honestly earned, and paid for in the blood and toil and constant suffering of an heroic and illustrious ancestry. Surely then, some faults and foibles may be forgiven the people of a nation who have won distinction all the world over and whose noble record may not unreasonably inspire them with proud confidence and self-reliant perseverance and self-assertion.

There are many, no doubt, who will admit Scotland's title to all the glory she has won, and who yet are ready with this objection, that old-country patriotism should be left at home. In Canada, it is urged, men should cease to be Englishmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen, and so forth, and be known only as Canadians. The motive which prompts this suggestion is laudable in itself. It seems in every way desirable that those who live in the Dominion, and especially the natives of this country, should cultivate and cherish a patriotic feeling of attachment to it - such an affection as may be fittingly termed national. No community composed of diverse elements ever became great until these were fused together and the entire people, irrespective of origin, learned to have common hopes and aspirations, and united in a combined effort to advance their country's progress and make it great and distinguished among the nations of the earth. But nationality is, after all, a growth, and not a spasm or a gush. It is certainly full time that Canadians began to regard their noble heritage with the eye of national pride and predilection, and that its life, political, intellectual and social, were taking a national tinge. If we cannot at once spring into the stature of complete manhood, it is at least possible, indeed necessary if we desire Canada to be great, that the habit, so to speak, of nationality should be formed and cherished until it grows to be a familiar and settled feature in our country's life. But it is quite another thing to propose that the slate shall be cleaned off, and that if this noble Canada of ours cannot begin without patriotic capital of its own, it should wait patiently until it has made a history and a name for itself. The stimulus necessary in the initial stages of colonial progress must be drawn from older lands; it cannot be improvised off-hand at pleasure. Factitious patriotism is a sentimental gew-gaw which anybody may fabricate and adorn with such tinsel rhetoric as he can command, but it bears no resemblance to the genuine article. As with the individual, so with the embryo nation; the life it leads, the pulse which leaps through its frame, is the life of the parent - the mother or the mother-land, as the case may be. Traditions gather about the young nationality as it advances through adolescence to maturity. Yet even the sons and grandsons of Englishmen, Scots, Irishmen, French or Germans must revere the memories of the country from which they sprang - glory in what is illustrious in its history, and strive to emulate the virtues transplanted in their persons to blossom on another soil and beneath another sky. The old maxim, "No one can put off his country," has lost its international value in a legal sense; but it remains valid in regard to the character, tendencies and aptitude of the individual man. Such as his country has made him he is, and, broadly speaking, he must remain to the end of the chapter; the national stamp will be impressed upon his children and his children's children, and traces of it will survive all vicissitude, and be perpetuated in his remotest posterity. In a new country there is much to dissipate traditional feelings, but inherited traits of character remain, and crop up long after the ties of political connection have been broken forever. Up to the time of the American Revolution, the colonists of New England, or Virginia, looked across the ocean with tender affection to the dear old land they had left behind. England was a harsh mother to some of those expatriated ones, yet they never ceased to feel an honest pride in her renown, and even beneath the surface-coldness of the Puritan character the glow of tender, and almost yearning, love for England burned in the heart and found expression in the writings of those early days. And, so at this day, with much to estrange the peoples of England and America, what is common to both on the glorious page of history, in the language and literature of the English-speaking peoples, seems to attach them again to each other with ever tightening bands. Crafty demagogues may flatter and prompt the ignorant prejudices of the residuum, but there can be little doubt that the sound heart of the United States is drawing closer to the maternal bosom than it has done at any time since '76.

Attachment to the land from which we or our fathers came is not only compatible with intense devotion to the highest interests of the country where we dwell, but is a necessary condition of its birth, its growth and its fervour. The dutiful son, the affectionate husband and father, will usually be the best and most patriotic subject or citizen; and he will love Canada best who draws his love of country in copious draughts from the old fountain-head across the sea. We have an example of strong devotion to the European stock, combined with unwavering attachment to Canada, in our French fellow-countrymen of Quebec. No people can be more tenacious of their language, their institutions and their religion than they are; they still love France and its past glories with all the passionate ardour of their warm and constant natures. And yet no people are more contented, more tenderly devoted to Canadian interests more loyal to the Crown and the free institutions under which they live. Sir Etienne Tache gave expression to the settled feeling of his compatriots when he predicted that the last shot for British rule in America would be fired from the citadel of Quebec by a French Canadian. The Norman and Breton root from which the Lower Canadians sprang was peculiarly patriotic, almost exclusively so, in a provincial or sectional sense in old France; and they, like the Scot, brought their proud, hardy and chivalrous nature with them to dignify and enrich the future of colonial life. The French Canadian, moreover, can boast a thrilling history in the Dominion itself, to which the English portion of the population can lay no claim. Quebec has a Walhalla of departed heroes distinctively its own; yet still it does not turn its back upon the older France, but lives in the past, inspired by its spirit to work out the problem of a new nationality in its own way. There is no more patriotic Canadian than the Frenchman, and he is also the proudest of his origin and race. There is nothing, then, to forbid the English-speaking Canadian from revering the country of his fathers, be it England, Scotland or Ireland; on the contrary, it may be laid down as a national maxim that the unpatriotic Englishman, Scot or Irishman will be sure to prove a very inferior specimen of the Canadian.

In this work we have to do with one portion of the British Empire, and it is perhaps well to disabuse the reader’s mind of a few mistaken prejudices he may have contracted. It is not the purpose of the "The Scot," any more than of its companion and predecessor, "The Irishman," to draw invidious and unfair comparisons between the nationalities or to boast unduly of the pre-eminent virtue, intelligence or prowess of either country. The design of the publishers was and is, to select in turn each of the elements which go to make up our Canadian population, and to trace separately, so far as that may be done, the history of its influence, the extent to which it has contributed to the settlement, growth and progress in development of the British North American Provinces. There is an advantage in such a mode of treatment which cannot fail to suggest itself to the reader, after a moment's reflection. A subject complex and unwieldly in the mass, is much more readily dealt with, if it be taken up by instalments; and no division promises so much interest and instruction as that which marks off the various factors as they were, originally and before combination, and then to follow them down the stream of time where they will at last be lost in a homogeneous current of national life. Be it, therefore, distinctly understood, on the threshold, that it is not intended to assert that British North America owes everything to Scotland and the Scots, and that its present and future greatness are entirely of Caledonian origin. St. Andrew forbid! The privilege is asserted here of eliminating, for the nonce, the other nationalities, in order that we may deal more clearly and comprehensively with Scottish character and its influence upon the settlement and progress of this vast outlying arm of the British Empire. If, therefore, prominence is given to the glorious history of Scotland, the sterling virtues of the Scottish people and the immense weight of obligation under which they have laid their fellows of other, and even widely severed, nationalities and races, all the world over, it is simply because to do so is our immediate business.

There are two clearly marked types of race in Scotland, and the distinction remains in the immigrant Scots; in religion, there is also a disturbing element, and although the Presbyterian or distinctively national faith is overwhelmingly preponderant, we must not lose sight of the remnant who have clung to the ancient Church or that other minority, for the most part highly cultured and intelligent, belonging to the Episcopal Church. Notwithstanding these complicating elements of race and religion, however, there is a substantial unity in Scottish history, a main type of character, firmly persisting in the Scot, which facilitates the preliminary portion of our task. In order to analyze the effect of Scottish settlement in British America, it is essential, in the first place, to examine the character of the people. What are the salient qualities which mark off the Scot from his brothers of the English-speaking race? How has he acquired them, and what are they intrinsically worth when brought to a new country, and contributed to the common stock? Obviously in order to answer these questions, even with proximate accuracy, it is necessary to take a hasty survey of the country, the origin and history of its people, so as to be in a position to judge what characteristics are markedly Scottish, what might be antecedently expected from the play of these national traits and aptitude, and what has really been achieved by the clear head and the stalwart arm of the Scot, at home, abroad, and more especially for that vast and progressive region in which our lot is cast.

It will be found that, although the people of that ancient land have served a hard apprenticeship in a land comparatively rugged and sterile, they have gone forth to the conflict of life equipped with the highest type of social energy and virtue. Though they have fought their own battles and contended for freedom in many lands, no race has practiced, with such unwearied industry and assured success, the nobler, arts of peace. The harrow of raid, invasion and unjust aggression, which tore the vitals of Scotland for centuries has not left them exhausted or desponding; on the contrary, from the blood and sweat which fertilized its soil have sprung the heroes of martial strife as well as of honest labour in every land beneath the sun. "Their sound has gone out into all the earth," and the record of their noble deeds is worked in broad characters upon the history, the civilization and the religion of the race. If we inquire whence those inestimable qualities arise, which, have been impressed upon the nationa1 character, they must be traced in the stern discipline of the past. The independent self-assertion, the sensitive pride, the delicate sense of honour, the indomitable perseverance, the unflinching courage and the rigid integrity of the Scot, are an inherited possession of which he may surely boast, and for which the world has substantial cause to be abundantly grateful. "Wha daur meddle wi' me?" the motto encircling the thistle, gives the key-note to the Scottish character. Says Hamilton in his lines to the old emblem:

"How oft beneath
Its martial influence, have Scotia's sons
Through every age, with dauntless valour fought,
On every hostile ground? While o'er their breast,
Companion to the silver star, blest type
Of fame unsullied and superior deed,
Distinguished ornament! this native plant
Surrounds the sainted cross, with costly row
Of gems emblazed, and flame of radiant gold,
A sacred mark, their glory and their pride."

So Allan Ramsay in "The Vision," a poem in antique dress; it is the genius of Scotland he describes: -

"Great daring darted frae his e’e,
A braid sword shogled at his thie,
On his left arm a targe;
A shining spear filled his right hand
Of stalwart make in bane and brawnd,
Of just proportions large;
A various rainbow-coloured plaid
Ower his left snail he threw
Down his braid back, frae his white head
The silver wimplers grew.
Amazed, I gazed
To see led at command,
A stampant and a rampant
Fierce lion in his hand."

It is in the martial prowess of the Scot, that one must seek for that invincible and plodding energy which has subdued the wilderness and shed abroad upon many lands the benign light of peace, plenty and civilization. The old warlike triumphs celebrated by many a Scottish bard and errant minstrel in hall and cot, were the harbingers of those unwearying wrestlings with the rude and untamed forces of nature, and with the ignorance and savagery of man, in which the Scots have earned laurels more enduring than those which encircle the brows of the doughtiest champions. For that later conflict, as will be seen more clearly hereafter, the people of Scotland were trained and disciplined in the hard school of penury, adversity and oppression. The world may mock those salient angularities of character, which are merely the accidents attaching to it, not its precious substance. They mark the fury of the furnace, the crushing weight of the pitiless hammer and the rough and inexorable strength of the grindstone; but they indicate also, only more conspicuously, the true and bright steel in the Scottish nature, its fine and polished temper, and the subtle keenness of its trenchant blade.


Previous Page | Return to Index Page | Next Page


 


This comment system requires you to be logged in through either a Disqus account or an account you already have with Google, Twitter, Facebook or Yahoo. In the event you don't have an account with any of these companies then you can create an account with Disqus. All comments are moderated so they won't display until the moderator has approved your comment.

comments powered by Disqus

Quantcast