STONE OF DESTISY.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 11 October 1924, Page 16

STONE OF DESTISY.

NOW PROPERLY PLACED. LONDON, Aug. 20. The slaughter of Mr. David Kirkwood’s Bill to remove the Stone of Destiny from Westminstter, which happened with the holocaust of other innocents at the end of the parliamentary session, does not make an end of the matter. It would' appear that there is a movement among certain Scots in London to set up a society to fight for the cause of this Bill. In the course of obtaining adherents the founders of this society asked Dr Archibald Fleming, minister of St Columba —the head and centre of Presbyterianism in London —to give his support to their cause. Dr Fleming has written giving his view of the matter. “Personally,” he says, “I have always regarded the present position of this historic stone as emblematic of a Scottish pretension to a soi-disaut conquest, the moderation of our English fellow citizens in accepting which with unruffled temper I have often admired. And it has always pleasantly seemed to me a rather remarkable instance of intelligent historical anticipation on the part of King Edward I that, apparently foreseeing the ultimate rule in Englang of a Scottish dynasty, he should, by removing the Coronation Stone from Scone to London, have made emblematic preparation for the apotheosis of James VI of Scotland into James I of England. His present Gracious Majesty, I take it, holds his Royal and Imperial station largely on the ground of his direct Stuart ancestry; and to remove the outward symbol of this from Westminster would, therefore, seem a needless Scottish historical abnegation —unless, indeed, the seat of Imperial Government were at the same time also to be transferred to Perth, the ancient capital of Scotland —a romantic speculation, but hardly a practicable proposition. In all seriousness, surely the combination, in one piece of stately furnishing, of the symbols of the King’s royalty alike in Scotland and in England, is an indication * of that unity in the person of the Sovereign which is the keystone of the Empire, and a sign that, despite the occasional pleasantries of racial rivalry, tlm peoples of the northern and southern kingdoms are, on the eoual terms of union of two sovereign nations, essentially aifd consciously one. “My suffrage, therefore, for what it is worth, must, T fear, he given against the proposal of Mr. Kirkwood, patriotic and warm-hearted Scotsman though I know him to he.”