REVIEW.

Colonist, Volume IV, Issue 425, 19 November 1861, Page 3

REVIEW.

SCOTLAND AND THE SCOTCH

The History of Civilisation in England. —By

Henry Thomas Buckle.

It is the fashion with English journalists—and not without show of reason—to ridicule what they call the 'provincialism' of the Irish, but especially of the Scotch. They argue that as these are united kingdoms, we#hould all forget what Bacon called the Idola of Tribe. They deprecate the keeping up of the jealousies of nationalism, and satirize the self-complacency of Sandy and Pat— their irritable self-assertion, and their thin-skinned itch of patriotism. We wonder that they do not discover how much they have of their own—by the way, we should be very sorry if they hadn't. They are notorious all over the continent for arrogance and assumption. They never lose an occasion of indulging in the provincialism of disparaging national reflections. Everything Scotch that is great or good they appropriate as English —everything mean or selfish they take care to distinguish as Scotch. In the civil Courts, Scotch law—infinitely superior to the English—is misrepresented to flatter our self-sufficiency; in the Police Reports anything that^ connects offences with the other side of the Tweed, is'sedulously registered. Punch and the Times do their best to throw contempt upon Caledonian manners and habits in a purely sectarian spirit, and Hume and Macaulay owe the depreciatory spirit of their critics to what fiscal officers call their 'country of origin. One would think that six hundred years was quite far enough removed into antiquity to claim an impartial and dispassionate handling of facts. Yet English historians pervert and ignore history to have a fling even at Wallace and at Bruce. One of the greatest of heroes and patriots, one of the best of men, must be a mere predatory savage to cover the dastardly and depraved cruelty and unknightly baseness of Edward the First; and to suit the convenience of flippant academic priggism, King Robert the Bruce, against the evidence of a thousand inexpugnable facts and traditions, must be discovered to be not even a Scotchman, to take something off the edge of the rout of Baunockburn. The attempt is the more absurd, because in seeking to minimise the Titans of our earlier history, English writers are unconsciously depreciating their own people. English and Scotch are the same people, as certainly as one common vernacular can make them. Old English is just as nearly as possible present Scotch. Chaucer and Spencer are more intelligible in Edinburgh than in London. The name Edinburgh itself is a corruption of Edwin's borough, called after one of our Saxon Princes. The English political ballads of the earlier history recently published under the Rolls Commission, are pretty nearly Scotch as now spoken, even down to the pronunciation. The northern end of the island is the more purely Saxon of the two. It is in the south that the population is least purely native, is most made up of contributions from the breeds, tongues, and habits of all the continental nations. He who thinks the Percy and the Douglas spoke different languages, and were of strange Mood, knows nothing of the facts of history. 'Chevy Chase' is the vernacular of both; and Wallace and John Hampdeo, Bruce and Fajjkland,'in different ems, and at different ends of the island, were yet of the same common stock—aye, and show the same British spirit. They talk of Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Northumberland, their very porridge and oaten cakes are Scotch. Lancashire and Yorkshire dialect is far more Scottish than English. The utterance of London, like the Latin of the city of Rome in the last days of the Republic, has been clipped and minced away from the 05 rotundum of the elder vocable Saxon, until it is 'almr.st afraid to know itself,' and Cockneydom laughs at the broad vernacular of its ancestors retained in the northern provinces, as the Athenians of the decadence did at the Greek of the colonists. Cab has become keb, and at last kib, Just as jftwehurch-gtveet, as it may be seen yet <viUteu

up at the end of it, has been converted into jFcwohuxch, both in the tongue and in print. At last we have so bedevilled our pronunciation both of Greek and Latin, that if we spoke in either language we should be wholly unintelligible to the scholars of every other country. This second volume of Mr. Buckle: is hailed with a critical chuckle, because it is supposed to * show up the Scotch.' Why even now We are gravely told, and Mr. Buckle is devoutly believed when he says it, that Scotland is more bigoted, superstitious, and uncivilised thaia Spain! It lias always been the most barbarous country, it seems, in Europe, and has ever been uncouth, behindhand, fanatical, and priest-ridden. Especially, we are assured that in the 17th century the Scotch were mere savages, under a gloomy Calvinistic theocracy that crushed the very soul and life of freedom, secular and sacred, out ot the body of the people. This journal has frequently taken occasion to publish what it thought on the subject of religious bigotry. But we are fully persuded that the intolerance and fanaticism of unbelief are quite as odious, and not lets destructive of all capacity to reason justly, or even to represent fairly. The tyranny of anarchy, and the intolerance pr toleration, are really less excusable, because less consistent, than the absolutism of the despot, and the self-sufficiency of the persecutor. Mr. Buckle has an emharras de richesses in the copiousness of historical knowledge, and his prodigious memory of details; but, like most minds of copious capacity tor the reception of facts, his mental digestion is bad, his habits of induction are slovenly and unscrupulous, his recollection is inaccurate, and his apprehension of materials is hasty and inexact. He stands woundily in need of a patent digester; and his intellectual grinder? call aloud for the assistance of mechanical masticators.

Let us see what he knows or comprehends of the, philosophy of social civilisation. Scotland has about one-seventh part of the population, and about a relative proportion of the wealth, of England. For many centuries she has had four thoroughly accomplished universities against England's two, a moat perfect parochial system, and a scheme of Church government so popular, efficient, democratic, and yet compact, as to be quite without a rival in any age or country. Parish schools are a modern innovation in England ; in Scotland they arc even older than Presbytery. The registration of titles and deeds, which even yet England has not, is many centuries old in Mr. Buckle's social wilderness. The municipal institutions are as ancient and more complete, having both civil and criminal jurisdiction ; merchant guilds, trade corporations, an annual convention of Royal boroughs, meeting to consult for mutual government of citizenship, an edile to take cognisance of buildings. It has an annual ecclesiastical Parliament, with complete legislative and executive functions, composed chiefly of lay delegates from each congregation and a portion of the clergy, who are all equal. Its County Courts, which ate both summary and of record, competent to decide every legal question involving the highest amounts, have brought, for many centuries, justice to every man's door, at a very cheap rate, and act as courts of probate, admiralty, separation and aliment. The tribunal of Sir Cresswell Cresswell is a very ancient and efficient Scottish institution. The jurisprudence is far more simple, philosophical, scientific, and sound, than that of this end of the island. The poetry of Wynton, Barbour, Thomas the Rymer, is .older and certainly not more rude than that of Chaucer, and the reliable historical traditions are quite as ancient in the one country as in the other. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. To what country in the world is Scotland second in every characteristic of the highest civilisation ? In proportion to her numbers, and material of capabilities, what country can for a moment be compared to her ? Is all this merely recent ? In ecclesiastical polity, in marriage laws, in local courts, in registration of deeds, which are all old, England is far behind her now; and our absurd divorce of law and equity is the laughingstock of every lawyer. The Pope's bull laying Scotland under interdict at the instance of JKdward the First was burnt at the mavket cross of every Scottish' borough by the hands of the headsman; and there arc extant now treaties ot commerce in very pure Latin between Sir William Wallace, as Regent, and the Hanse Towns, which run ' by the authority of the kingdom of Scotland,' and '' by and with the advice and consent of the people and community of the same.' But Mr. Buckle hates Calvinism and parsondom, and his blooi boils at the gloomy tyranny of the Scottish clergy in the seventeenth cen'ury, and therefore everything in Scotland was and is barbarous. Well, living now, and living here, we have no great fivor for them or for their creed, which we have often turned inside out. But who constructed the confession of faith, and catechism of the Kirk ? ,Why, the Westminster Assembly, chiefly of English divines. Had we no sour and tyrannical Puritans? Have we forgotten the Bloody Mary, Titus Oates, snd the Nonjuring clergy ? Read the history of the Commonwealth, Unitarians, Methodists, and Cameronians were admitted to atf*corporate offices in Scotland long before the repeal of our Test and Corporation Acts. The fact is, the circumstances Mr. Buckle adduces to show the barbarism of Scotland, prove only her spiritual zeal, and religious earnestness —strange to say, are the most conclusive proofs of her civilisation. The Scottish people were ground by feudal oppression and monarchial despotism. Their clergy, learned graduates of eminent foreign universities, were classical republicans, and enlightened in all views of civil polity. They returned home, and saw that political revolt against civil oppression was impracticable—hat, however, men could be roused to that patriotism and heroic resistance to tyranny by their spiritual devotedness, if they were elevated, refined, and intelligent enough to be governed by their souls and comictions rather than by their sense?, which they \y||ild not encounter as mere tenants of this life. They made every parish a republic, every congregation a community—they made every head "of a family a member of a theocratic body politic. In the absence of a police, an army, a press, magistrates, jurisdiction, they became self-governed, they rebuked immorality, disorder, disloyalty, were censors, constables, judges, legislators. Out of this revival of the Institution of Hundreds, devised by Alfred and the Hindoos, they spread to higher and more numerous magisterial institutions of presbyteries, synods, and general assemblies, until the whtijjte kingdom was thoroughly organised; the people and their leaders emancipated themselves horn the slavery of feudalism and the oligarchy of the Scottish parliament, defied monarchy itself, and laid the foundation of national progress and independence. We do not know in the whole history of society so effective a'n^instrument. of civilisation as this theocratic systenffpvoved to be. It converted a rabble info a community, and gave laws, rights, protection, and practically a police, to a people struggling out of the bondage of oligarchy and depostism. That it imposed a tyranny of its own is only to say that the age was rude, the circumstances desperate, and toleration unknown. But it was for all that the very source of citizenship, which civilisation means. The Scotch are not and never were a priest-ridden people, they are only religion-ridden. Every man U his own theologian. They scorned and defied the Pope, they mobbed the prelatic parsonry, and made bishops run for their lives. They deposed their presbyters whenever they were heterodox or immoral—they emptied the churches and left the parochial clergy at the disruption—and they have erected a new ecclesiastical establishment, with schools and theological universities, by their own zeal, and of their own spontaneous will. Pahaps if we nla1 left them their own houses of lords and commons, and sovereign and court, and seat of government at Edinburgh, the Scotch would have exhausted that superfluous energy on politics, for which ecclesiastical legislation and sectarian controversy are now the only outlets. Calvinism is gloomy, and Presbyterian orthodoxy mi rose, bigoted, and intolerant. *A Scotch Sunday is no doubt an unnecessarily dreary affair; there is some hypocrisy with all this sanctimoniousness, and a tyranny of public opinion somewhat irksome to free thinkers. Perhaps there is a sense of decorum, of decency, qf the oUigatiQu of QonaUtency and

earnestness in religion, which the Scotch cany too far for the tastesof other people. But, after all, the poor crowd their churches, while ours are attended only by the rich. The peasantry are well clad, orderly, moral, and intelligent, by dint of careful example, andfamiliar intercourse with their minister. They are peculiarly self-respecting, and careful of the spiritual nurture of their children. We are sorry to say they enjoy and spend upon the good thing 3of this life a great deal more than is wiae and prudent. The dinners, balls, entertainments of all kinds are more frequent and more in excess of the means of their middle classes than with us; insomuch, indeed, that in twenty or thirty years the leading citizens and old squirearchy of Midlothian have in a great measure disappeared, and their places have been supplied by wmvaux riches; and that the country of Burns and Scott, Adam Smith, and David Hume, Jupiter Carlyle, Kames, Wilson, the Noctes, whisky and the Highland fling, Wilkie* Noel Paton, Faed and Gibson, is neither so straightlaced nor so orthodox as it would fain have us to believe. In a word, we fear it is but too true that there is not a pin to choose between Sandy and John, either in extravagance, fashionable dissipations, social display, or the various pleasure-hunt-ing expedients for killing time in Vanity Fair, in place of husbanding and improving it.— Weekly Dispatch.