Quotes from the Past: No. 3 ‘The Glasgow Satirist and Dramatic Critic’, September 1848

Issue No. 2 Saturday, September 9, 1848

pages 10-11

THE GENEROSITY OF ENGLAND TO THE SCOTCH

WE thought that when the majority of the Scottish Parliament voted for a union, that we were to possess equal privileges with Englishmen, not in the light of a concession granted to us, but as our right as a free and independent people. The Times (Sept. 2,) says – “When treason was a losing throw, and sedition  an unmeaning word, Scotland braced her head and energies to grapple with England in other fields and another contest. Her sons, despairing of mutilating the instruments of imperial power, took to a contest of a peaceful emulation and civic competition. They won from England and Englishmen the rewards and prizes which England and Englishmen had proposed to the common ambition of the united countries. Within one hundred years of her last rebellion, Scotland has gained more real power , more solid importance,” &c. These, we suppose, consist in the descendants of the Highland rebels being driven from their native glens, and their plots of land converted into sheep farms for rearing prime mutton, as good solids are the greatest “solid importants” which can be placed before an Englishman. We must confess that this ridiculous roaring of the Lion of the press, about Scotland, sounds precious like the braying of a jackass.