Here is an account of the Scots by Professor James
Anthony Froude of Oxford, who suffered all his life by his indiscreet
devotion to what he regarded as the Truth.
"If we except the Athenians and the Jews, no
people so few in number have scored so deep a mark in the worlds history
as you have ever done. No people have a juster right to be proud of their
blood.
"Even now you are teaching us what, unless we saw
it before our eyes, no Englishman would believe to be possible; that an MP
can be elected without bribery. For shrewdness of head thorough-going
completeness, contempt of compromise and moral backbone, no set of people
were ever started into life more generously provided." (At St Andrew’s
University, 19th March 1869).
Our last historian was David Home (generally called
Hume for the benefit of the English) and he wrote the history of England!
A good history of Scotland could be written only by a writer as skilled in
Gaelic as in English.
When a writer has some historical insight (she) he
writes a historical novel; when she (he) has none, she (he) writes
history.
The reason is this. In a good historical novel
everything but the facts is trite: in a history nothing but the facts is
true. And sometimes not even these!
The greater part of history is TORY" and the
Tories have falsified it for propaganda purposes. I once took a degree
with distinction in Tory Propaganda, which the University of Glasgow
called "European History". I had to unlearn it afterwards when I
began my education.
William Paterson was the originator of the Darien
Scheme, of the Bank of England and the drafter of the financial clauses in
the Treaty of Union. What other name is associated with three such
failures?
I was taught at school that the Border abbeys were
pulled down by the Reformers. No-one told me about Hereford who destroyed
them and was later called by the English - how ironically - Protector
Somerset! They hanged him for some less serious reason.
It has been the habit of anti-Scots (and even of
Scottish Nationalists) to belittle Bruce, as if he was a self-seeking
Norman baron and not a patriot. Professor G.W.S. Barrow has dealt with
this on page 37 of his Robert Bruce. "He may fairly be called
a Scotsman born among Scots. He was assuredly much more a Scotsman than
his great adversary Edward I was an Englishman... But the truth seems to
be that Robert Bruce’s upbringing was coloured by a mixture of
traditions of which the Gaelic traditions of Carrick and the West must
have been one.
Here is a historical conundrum: She was descended from
Colin, first Earl of Argyll; from Archibald, second Earl killed at Flodden;
from the Earl of Angus and Sir John Wishart; from the Rev. William Wishart,
Minister of Kinneil, and the Rev. George Wishart, minister of St Cuthbert’s.
She was Johanne Bertha Julie Jennie, Baroness von Westphalen. What was her
married name?
The answer is Mrs Karl Marx.
In guide hooks the massacre of Glencoe is described as
part of the clan warfare between the Campbells and the MacDonalds. That is
one of the myths of history. The greatest responsibility falls on William
III, who signed the document authorising the deed (though this was
contrary to his general character.)
The next responsible was Sir John Dalrymple, Secretary
for Scotland, who was dismissed, rewarded with a pension and then
reinstated. It was finally an atrocity committed by the British Army (as
at Amritsar) under Sir Thomas Livingstone, who received a peerage and a
monument in Westminster Abbey (like so many other criminals).
Of the adult population of 150 Only about 40 were
killed, which testifies to the humanity of the soldiers.
The MacDonalds were not Roman Catholics but
Episcopalians. They came back to their glen and increased until the
Clearances succeeded where the massacre had failed and put an end to their
community.
I met the leading personalities of the early Socialist
movement after the first Labour Government had demoralised and killed it.
Some of the idealists came over to the National Party of Scotland. (Such
was John L. Kinloch) They had powerful influence on that new bodv giving
it much-needed experience.
Of the disillusioned, some like Sir Patrick Dollan and
John MacGovern took to religion. Others took to drink - they were the
better ones!
Any new idea requires an institution to defend it and
give it permanence. In the long run that institution sacrifices some of
its idea in order to maintain itself. Then the idea becomes forgotten and
its means of defence replaces it. So Christianity leads to the Holy
lnquisition and Socialism to the Labour Party.
Who Was England’s Patron Saint? Here is the account
given by England’s greatest historian (The Students’ Gibbon p. 172):
"George, from his parents or his education,
surnamed the Cappadocian, was of mean origin and having obtained a
lucrative contract to supply the army with bacon, he accumulated wealth by
the basest arts of’ fraud and corruption; but his malversations were so
notorious that George was compelled to escape from the pursuits of’
justice. Each moment of’ his reign was polluted by cruelty and avarice,
and he oppressed with an impartial hand the various inhabitants of his
extensive diocese.
"Under the reign of Constantius he was expelled by
the fury or rather by the justice, of the people, and it was not without a
violent struggle that the civil and military powers of the State could
restore his authority and gratify his revenge. The messenger who
proclaimed at Alexandria the accession of Julian announced the downfall of
the Archbishop.
George was ignominiously dragged in chains to the public prison and at
the end of 24 days was torn to pieces by fury of the multitude who,
impatient of the tedious forms of judicial procedure, forced open the
prison (December 24, A.D. 361).
"The odious stranger, disguising every circumstance of time and place, assumed the mask of a
marytyr. A Christian saint and the
infamous George of Cappadocia has been transformed into the renowned St
George of England, the patron of arms, of chivalry and of the
garter." What do yon think now of the Union Jackal?
I do think it strangely appropriate that England’s patron criminal
should be a swindling army contractor!