|
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. |
