A WORD FOR SCOTSMEN.

Evening Star, Issue 4115, 5 May 1876, Page 3

A WORD FOR SCOTSMEN.

The following extract from a speech delivered by a Mr Meston to the Ipswich (Queensland) Highland Society will be read with interest-“ When envious blockheads sneer at the objects of your society, always remember that you are descendants of one of the mightiest races that the world has ever produced, and that you are men with souls too noble and dignified to care for or recognise with any other feeling than contempt the miserable wretches whose mean spirits rejoice over the downfall of the mighty. There is an old-established custom of mankind, handed down to ns from time immemorial, pure and unadulterated as Wolfe’s immaculate schnapps, and that good old time-honofed institution consists in men throwing up their own hats when no one will undertake that interesting ceremony for them. It will, therefore, be no departure from the habits of the ancient and moderns if we say a few words about ourselves, I am proud to stand here to-night before so many splendid specimens of the sons of matchless Caledonia, and am doubly proud, my countrymen, when I think of that immortal race from whence we sprang, of glorious ancestors whose mighty deeds in bygone ages have built them eternal monuments t upon the fields of fame, and handed down such a halo of glory to posterity that we may be proud to stand here tonight, filled with the consciousness that we are Scotchmen, descendants of the mighty dead ! Every hill, and lake, and stream in Scotland has seen her sons fall with their faces to the foe, and shed their best blood like water on their native billV in defence of that liberty which has become the birthright of us all, and I feel that the Caledonians of to-day are only wanting in occasion to prove themselves worthy of the warriors of the past, and show to the world that Scotland is the mother of the free and the brave, and of men who go out to battle with the determination to oon- - quer or to die, and struggle for ‘ Victory or the grave!’ The Highlander of to-day iis .3hst...ftß..valorous as those of old who drove back the Dane, and the Nora el™an, T» an< * th® Norman and taught eveii the Homan phalanx to fear the claymoire of the Highlander the steel off matchless Gael. And wherefore •not . Have ive hotj tyithiu, us the ftirring memory of a thousand years ? Have we not the arm* to strike and the soul to dare, and

the same unconquered spirit that met Edward 11. on the banks of the Bannockburn, and proved the bravery of the Highlander at Corunna, Badajcz, and. all the battles of the Crimea and the campaigns of India ? In the forests of America, the defiles of Spain, the plains and jungles of India, in the burning heat of the tropics, or the frozen snow of his own land, the Highlander is still the same true, brave, and noble soldier that sent the thunder of his slogin along the old battlefields of his native clime. There is not a spot on the face of the earth where the con querer has not marched his armies except over the Highlands of Scotland; so you are proudly conscious of springing from a race that never was conquered, and from a land where the battalions of Cromwell went nd farther than the middle legions of Julius Caesar. There were those who say that the Highlanders of old were a race of barbarians, but we would remind the scoffer that the whole world was at that time in a state of barbarism, but no country in the world has advanced more rapidly with civilisation, or produced abler men in every department of literatme, science, and art, or attained to a higher position in education, than Scotland has. No country in the world has a more marvellous history of a people striving to cast off every fetter that bound them through ages of battle and blood and carnage. Through the dreary vista of time there march the countless hosts of the ‘ departed spirits of the mighty dead,’ and there comes before us the memory of a country, and a people unsullied by one single national disgrace through all the centuries of savage fanaticism and barbarism. While almost every other country has record some national disgraceful deed, Scotland remains perfectly undefiled by one single act of which a Highlander need blush to hear or a Caledonion shun the recital of. Clansmen ! If ever that immortal battery in the Queen’s Park shall proclaim that the enemy’s ships have passed St. Helena, then shall the martial music of our patriotic pipers call the invincible Highlanders to arms, and there shall be sung the “Campbells are Coming’ and the “March of the Cameron Men’ while ‘clash their broadswords in the van, the wild M‘Parlanes plaided clan ’ and the war cry of Clan Alpine, and the slogan of Lochiel shall be heard under the Scottish banner, the unconquered lion of Caledonia; and never while it waves aloft in the Australian winds shall this soil be contaminated by the foot of the proud invader, and never shall our inimitable whisky-punch be adulterated with the bear-grease of the Russian, the sauerkraut of the German, or the frog of the festive Frenchmen! If ever this laud of shall be conquered, and the conqueror’s flag shall wave exasperatingly from the lovely dome of the Parliament buildings where meet the Queensland Ciceros, then shall some sad and lone Australian conduct the foe to a circle of newly-erected tombstones and say, from the depths of a broken heart, ‘ These are the graves of the lost and lovely, the last resting place of the Queensland Highland Society's Clansmen ; drink to the thousand memories of liberty, valor, and glory that live in the magic name of Caledonia !’ ”