Is the Scottish Character Degenerating?

Edinburgh, August 27, 1902.

Our stay in Edinburgh has come to an end. It has been a delightful month in spite of the weather. Claudius Clear says, "Edinburgh is so beautiful that, for love of her face, she is forgiven her bitter east winds," adding that "there is a keenness, a rawness, a chilliness in the air, which you do not find in South Britain." So there is, and yet we have been out of doors a great deal, and have threaded her streets and closes, and climbed her heights in every direction—Arthur's Seat, Salisbury Crags, Calton Hill, The Castle, Corstorphine, The Braid Hills, The Pentlands—and made excursions to the Forth Bridge, Hawthornden, Rosslyn, Duddingston (where the minister most kindly showed us, between showers, everything of interest in and around the little church in which Sir Walter Scott was once an elder), Craigmillar Castle, Musselburgh, North Berwick, Bass Rock (the dungeons of which were once filled with Covenanters, whose only offence was adhering to the form of religion which the king had bound himself by his coronation oath to maintain), Tantallon Castle, with its memories of Marmion, and Rullion Green, with its memories of the Martyrs, and, of course, within the city, Greyfriars Churchyard, The Grassmarket, Holyrood and the rest. What a wealth of beauty and history and romance!

Yet there are some very criticizable things about Edinburgh, such as the unseemly billing and cooing of lovers of the servant class in public places, for instance the Princes Street Gardens, where they may be seen at almost any hour of the day embracing each other in the most unblushing manner, apparently oblivious of the passing multitude. There may be just as much of this going on in the parks of other cities, but the peculiar position of these lovely gardens in the great, green hollow in the very centre of the city, in plain view of the most crowded streets, and the most popular hotels, makes this impropriety more obtrusive here than it is anywhere else.

But worse than this are the ever-present proofs of the poverty, wretchedness and degradation of great numbers of the people. The slums of Edinburgh are more constantly in evidence than those of any other city in the world. The reason for this is not that the slums are more populous or worse than those of other cities, but that the parts of Edinburgh which are of the greatest interest to visitors, viz., the High Street, from the Castle to Holyrood, and the adjacent districts, where the great families once lived, and where the most memorable events of the city's history occurred, the parts made familiar to all readers by the writings of Sir Walter Scott and the historians of Scotland, have long since been abandoned by the better classes, and are now occupied by the poorest and most degraded. So that every reading person who visits Edinburgh is brought face to face, day after day, with all this squalor and misery; and it is so different from what one naturally expects to find in Scotland, and especially in this ancient and wealthy seat of learning, that it makes a very strong impression upon the imagination—an impression so strong that it is scarcely counterbalanced, even by long sojourn in the scrupulously clean residential sections, on either side of this filthy and festering centre.

Why should there be such a plague spot in the heart of Edinburgh? The explanation cannot be found in any lack of native ability on the part of Scotchmen to overcome the conditions that bring about abject poverty. It is universally conceded that in the qualities which make for success in life the Scots are well-nigh unrivalled. Mr. Andrew Carnegie is a pre-eminent example, but the thrift of Scotchmen in general is a proverb. [2]

Nor can the explanation of the dire poverty and wretchedness seen in Scotch cities be found in their disregard of the Sabbath rest and the Sabbath worship, as in the case of some other European peoples, though there seems to be of late some relaxation of their rigid sabbatarianism. Their strictness in this matter has been the subject of many a good story. One is told of a little girl in Aberdeen, who brought a basket of strawberries to the minister's, very early Monday morning.

"Thank you, my little girl, they are very nice,", said the minister; "but I hope you did not pick them yesterday, for it was Sunday, you know."

"No, sir," replied the child, "but," she added, with some dismay, "they were growing all day yesterday."

A devout Scottish minister once stopped at a country inn, in the northern part of his native land, to pass the Sunday. The day was rainy and close, and toward night, as he sat in the little parlor of the inn, he suggested to his landlady that it would be desirable to have one of the windows raised, so that they might have some fresh air in the room.

"Mon," said the old woman, with stern disapproval written plainly on her rugged face, "dinna ye ken that ye can hae no fresh air in this hoose on the Sawbath?"

Another is related by Dr. Thomas Guthrie, in his autobiography. It was Sunday morning, and Guthrie was preaching, away from home. After breakfast, he asked his host for a cup of hot water to shave with. "Whist, whist," was the response; "if ye wanted hot water for your toddy, 'twould be all right; but if this congregation kenned that ye called for water to shave with, there wad nae be a soul in the kirk to hear ye."

This last incident brings us in sight of the true explanation of Edinburgh's misery. The great curse of Scotland is drunkenness. The real cause of the deplorable change that seems to be taking place in the character of her people is intemperance. Mr. Charles E. Price, of the well-known firm of McVittie & Price, who is the prospective Liberal candidate for the Central Division of Edinburgh, in a recent address, made after a visit to our country, says he was struck with the general sobriety of the American people. He did not see eight persons drunk on the streets during his three months' tour, and he contrasts this showing with the gross drunkenness seen on the streets of Edinburgh. He quotes the startling figures in the letter of Lord Balfour of Burleigh, to the Lord Provost of Glasgow, taken from the annual report of the Commissioners of Prisons, according to which the number of commitments during the twelve months, 1900-1901, was, for England, 571 per hundred thousand of the population, and for Ireland, 793, and for Scotland, 1,402! That is, nearly twice as many for Scotland as for Ireland, and nearly three times as many for Scotland as for England. "Ah!" I said to myself sorrowfully, "whiskey again." Such was the comment of Mr. John A. Steuart, the Scottish author and social reformer, when this shocking official statement appeared in the newspapers; and, referring to Lord Balfour of Burleigh's declaration, that the time has come when it is necessary to consider whether a large new prison should not be erected, he adds, "That is the commentary of your Secretary of State on the morality of the countrymen of John Knox." Mr. Steuart goes on to show that the national drink bill, direct and indirect, amounts to the enormous sum of £300,000,000. "Three hundred millions sterling and one hundred thousand human lives, that is the yearly expense of maintaining the publican. The South African war cost us altogether 20,000 lives; during the period it lasted the drink traffic cost us upwards of 250,000, that is to say, for every soldier who died in South Africa, from wounds or disease, twelve men and women in Britain perished miserably from strong drink. Let Christian people think of it.... Nothing is more certain than this, that religion and the drink traffic cannot flourish together, and one of them is flourishing terribly now.... If the church does not gird herself promptly and vigorously to dispose of the drink traffic, the drink traffic will assuredly dispose of the church." In an American journal I find the statement that, in writing to Dr. T. L. Cuyler recently, sending him a generous contribution to the National Temperance Society, Mr. Andrew Carnegie, after expressing his deep interest in the temperance cause, added, "The best temperance lecture I have delivered lately was my offer of ten per cent. premium on their wages to all employees on my Scottish estates who will abstain from intoxicating liquors."

Speaking still more recently, at an entertainment at Govan, Scotland, Mr. Carnegie said "he wished his countrymen would take to their hearts that the one blot upon the people of Scotland was that they often fell from true manhood through the use of intoxicating liquor. There was a saying in America that a totally abstaining Scotsman could not be beaten, and wherever a Scot has fallen, it was, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, the result of intemperance. Every Scotsman at home or abroad had in his keeping part of the honor of Scotland, and Scotland having so much more honor per man than other lands, it followed that every Scot carried a greater load of honor than the man of other lands. He wished that every word of his to workmen in Scotland would cause them to reflect upon that, and to resolve that henceforth they would never disgrace either themselves or the land that gave them birth. The only defect of the Scot, compared with the man of other lands, was that of intemperance, which, however, he rejoiced to know, was steadily decreasing."

One other ominous feature of present day conditions in Scotland I find referred to in the following clipping from a British journal:

"In Edinburgh of late the Jesuits have been showing unwonted activity. Owing partly to the unsettling effect of Biblical criticism upon the average mind, and partly to some utterances by some of the leading ministers in the Scottish churches, the Society has evidently deemed the moment opportune for pressing the claims of Rome upon the Scottish people. In their spokesman, Father Power, who addresses a great gathering every Sabbath evening in the open, they have an instrument well fitted for their purpose. Of fine presence, manifest learning, and no mean orator, he is bound to make an impression on some minds. Here is one sentence from his last lecture. After referring to the utterance of a noted Scottish divine in the General Assembly, reflecting on some passage in the Confession of Faith, he said, 'So that fundamental basis being removed (the Confession), the Presbyterian Church collapsed like a house of cards. And hence I say that the Catholic Church has an opportunity, let us hope a God-given one, for entering the field once occupied by our late lamented sister.'"

But he would be a sanguine man, indeed, who could believe that the people of Scotland generally would ever become Roman Catholics. For one thing, there is too much printing there. For the Vicar of Croyden was a true prophet when he said, in the early days of the Reformation, "We must root out printing, or printing will root out us."