papers—more particularly the local papers, not the “national”
organs—telling how a debate on the question of Home Rule for Scotland
has been held here or there, and, almost invariably, the paragraph
ends with the statement that, on a vote being taken, there was a
large majority in favour of it. That is to say a majority of that
small minority who attend meetings. No one who is in the habit of
going up and down the country and coming into varied contact with the
public can fail to observe that more and more are inclined to the
movement with a sympathy which has greatly intensified within the
past few years. These are they, in my opinion, who “feel in their
bones” the larger issues of which I have been speaking, but have
not yet developed more than a political reaction to them. Observers
of very different shades of political opinion agree that the time
is ripening for a new political nationalism, as part and parcel of
a general national awakening. There is little agreement, however,
as to how this widespread latent feeling may be crystallized, in
the best interests of Scotland and the wider interests inevitably
involved. Partial views, and partial solutions, abound; but none of
these proffered precipitants are powerful enough to act on more than
a small proportion of the flux of opinion that is obviously awaiting
effective re-direction. What is it that intervenes in ninety-nine
cases out of a hundred, to prevent the sympathetic Scotsman from
giving any practical effect to his feelings on such a matter?
Scotland is unique among European nations in its failure to develop
a nationalist sentiment strong enough to be a vital factor in its
affairs—a failure inconsistent alike with our traditional love of
country and reputation for practicality. The reason probably lies in
the fact that no comprehensive-enough agency has emerged; and the
commonsense of our people has rejected one-sided expedients incapable
of addressing the organic complexity of our national life. For it
must be recognized that the absence of Scottish nationalism is,
paradoxically enough, a form of Scottish self-determination. If that
self-determination, which, in the opinion of many of us, has reduced
Scottish arts and affairs to a lamentable pass, is to be induced to
take a different form and express itself in a diametrically opposite
direction to that which it has taken for the past two hundred and
twenty years, the persuading programme must embody considerations
of superior power to those which have so long ensured the opposite
process. Scottish opinion is anachronism-proof in matters of this
kind. The tendency inherent in the Union, to assimilate Scotland to
England, and ultimately to provincialize the former—the stage which
has been so unexpectedly but unmistakably arrested at the eleventh
hour—has, as a matter of fact, not yet been effectively countered
by the emergence of any principle demanding a reversed tendency.
That is why, despite the persistence in Scotland of an entirely
different psychology, the desire to retain and develop distinctive
traditions in arts and affairs, and the fairly general recognition
that the political, economic and social consequences of the Union
have never been by any means wholly favourable to Scottish interests
and have latterly, in many ways, become decreasingly so to a very
alarming degree, there has nevertheless been at most little more
than a passive resistance to complete assimilation masked by an
external acquiescence. This is because Home Rule has been conceived
for the most part, even by its advocates, merely as a measure of
devolution—a continuance of substantially the same thing as prevails
at Westminster; not something fundamentally different and answering
to the unexpressed needs of the Scottish spirit. It is this passive
resistance which accounts, for example, for the comparative paucity
and poverty of distinctively Scottish literature since the Union.
Only that fringe of the Scottish genius amenable to Anglicization
has continued to find expression; the rest has, practically, “held
its tongue,” and, to a large extent, its powers of expression have
atrophied. A similar phenomenon manifests itself in our schools.
Many teachers tell me that the children’s abilities to express
themselves, and, behind that, to think, are largely suppressed by
official insistence upon the use of “correct English.” They actually
think, and could express themselves a great deal more readily and
effectively, in dialect. This tenacity of Scots in the life of our
people is extraordinary. Observe the way even “educated people”
lapse into it on convenient occasions, or when they are genuinely
moved. To ban it from our schools is, therefore, a psychological
outrage. A distinctive speech cannot be so retained in the intimate
social life, in the thinking of a people without an accompanying
subterranean continuance of all manner of distinctive mental
states and potentialities. The inhibition of these is all the
worse when, as in Scotland to-day, they are denied their natural
pabulum—when, for example, as so often happens, an appeal to Scottish
sentiment is applauded by those who, owing to the way in which our
educational system has been organized, have little or no knowledge
of our separate history and culture, and have been taught to take
it for granted that Scotland’s future is wholly identified with
England’s, and that economic and social expediency are best served by
discarding the shibboleths of “a distinction without a difference.”
It is upon these camouflaged or hidden forces, however—many of
them unconscious—that the ultimate direction, if it has any, of
“Scotland—a Nation,” must depend. Only so can Scotland, as such,
re-enter the mainstream of European arts and affairs. This reservoir
of “difference” has not yet been tapped by any of our Scottish
nationalist movements; few, indeed, have realized its existence or
made it their objective. That is why they have been so ineffective.
But latterly there has been a significant change. Its promise lies
in the fact that it is not limited to Scotland, but, as Dr J. M.
Bulloch has said, is a world-movement, naturally becoming specially
well-defined in Scotland, to “set up a resistance to the efforts,
many of them due to mechanisms and not a few to political theories,
to make us all of one mind.” It is manifesting itself in many diverse
ways—not yet co-ordinated into a comprehensive reversal of the
general tendency it is arresting.
The recent Scottish breaks-away from English domination in regard
to such widely-separated interests as the lifeboat service and
the protection of birds are straws which show the way the wind is
blowing. Cultural forces have manifested themselves and demonstrated
the timeliness, if not the necessity, of specifically Scottish
developments in relation to the European situation as a whole.
Religious forces are now manifesting themselves. The “Irish invasion”
may be the “point of departure.” Happily it is already clear that
we have here far more, and far other, than (as Dr G. F. Barbour puts
it) “the ominous beginnings of a form of controversy from which
Scotland has long been free—that regarding religious education.” Art
and religion—if these two are being nationalistically stirred, we
have the conditions we have hitherto lacked for the re-creation of
a dynamic Scottish nationalism. These are factors of incalculably
greater power than those which have already produced the meagre and
ineffective phenomena of Scottish nationalism since the Union—and
factors leading right back into that “reservoir of indifference”
of which I have spoken. It is not surprising to find, with the
emergence of significant developments in these two great fields of
consciousness, a simultaneous leap in the membership of the political
nationalist societies. That membership has more than trebled itself
within two years. And the measure of autonomy which is being
contended for has increased proportionately. So long as Scottish
Home Rule was regarded as, more or less, an end in itself, it was
incapable of attracting a sufficient measure of active support to
demonstrate the falsity of calling it—as most of the papers persist
in calling it—“the absurd demand of a handful of fanatics.”
There is a time-factor in all these things. The discoveries which
have recently revolutionized physical science are due to a strain of
“heresy” in mathematics, long ridiculed and sterile, but now come
to its own as the medium of stupendous discoveries the heretics
themselves never anticipated in their wildest dreams. The position in
regard to Scottish Nationalism to-day is not dissimilar. A form of
Scottish Home Rule would probably ultimately have been granted, if
for no other reason than the congestion of business at Westminster—a
matter of mere administrative convenience; and the present attempt to
destroy the last vestiges of Scottish control of Scottish affairs by
the wholesale transference of Departments to London is probably due
to the realization that this goal, which was almost within grasp, is
unaccountably receding. It would have made for greater efficiency,
and, temporarily, for economy—but it would not have been utilizable
for the deeper purposes I have indicated. On the contrary it would
have represented the last step in the assimilation of Scotland
to England. Scottish Home Rule Societies in the past have sought
little more; and have encountered, in Scotland, the overwhelming
objection to a “glorified County Council.” The deep intuitions of
the people were right. The time had not come. All the bills hitherto
promoted to give Scotland this or that measure of self-government
have been inadequate means to the ends in reserve. Has the time
come now? Unlike any of its predecessors the latest Draft Bill is
“nation-size” and in significant alignment, if only in the steepening
of its demands, with those profounder stirrings of the national
consciousness to which “mere politics” are comparatively irrelevant,
although in the last analysis they may be dependent upon them, as the
big things in life often are upon the little.
The Bill as an end in itself would still be of little consequence
perhaps; but as a means to steadily emerging ends which cannot yet be
clearly defined, but which it is obviously anticipating and likely
to facilitate, it is on a different plane. And its promoters cannot
realize too clearly that, as Charles Maurras has said, “The man of
action is but a workman whose art consists in taking advantage of
the lucky chances. All politics come back to this art of lying in
wait for the _combinazione_, the happy chance. A moment always comes
when the problem of success is a question of insight, and reduces
itself to a search for what our Ancients called _junctura rerum_, the
place where the bony structure bends, though it is rigid elsewhere,
the place where the spring of the action will play.” Success may be
unexpectedly near, and stupendous in its sequelæ.
V
In the meantime the extirpation of “a Scottish accent” in the
Scottish schools continues almost unabated, although, as Lady
Margaret Sackville says, and as the cultural poverty of post-Union
Scotland amply attests, “language imposed mechanically upon a
people without understanding of their peculiar ways of thought
can only be stultifying; and it is an impertinence to substitute
a pert, half-baked, and complacent education for the very ancient
culture which the Vernacular represents. Let education rather work
hand in hand with this culture and humbly learn from it to its own
great gain.” But the general attitude to England, and Scotland’s
relation to it, is far deeper, and for the most part other than mere
“protective mimicry.” Apart from the claim to which I have referred
there is a widespread reluctance to think about the matter—to discuss
it in any way. No probable, perhaps no possible, development of
Scots Nationalism could lead to a complete disjunction of the two
countries; or preclude their remaining parts of the British Empire.
Opponents of Scottish Home Rule, of course, generally argue that such
a measure would be a piece of retrogressive parochialism at variance
with the part we are called upon to play as citizens of a great
Empire. Especially is this argument being used against the newer
forms which that demand is taking. The reason for this is that they
represent that growth or rebirth of national sentiment in Scotland
in recent years, which has brought with it the increasing realization
that any measure of devolution which does not carry with it full
financial autonomy is not worth having. Besides, the powers granted
to the Irish Free State render it impossible, as derogatory to its
historical status as a nation, that Scotland should accept any less.
The latest Draft Bill meets these considerations, and is thus a far
more advanced measure than any of its eleven predecessors. A typical
comment runs as follows: “The Old ‘Home Rulers,’ while they aimed
at autonomy for the management of the strictly domestic business of
Scotland, jealously safeguarded Scotland’s position in the United
Kingdom and the Empire. Nothing was more repugnant to them than the
idea that the country should cease to have its full representation in
the Imperial Parliament. In the new Bill that ceases, and Scotland in
nearly everything but a joint interest in the armed forces becomes
detached and isolated; and provision appears to be made for the
severance at some future time of even this link.... It is a reversal
of the whole process of constitutional progress which governs
British history.” This is the generally accepted view. But—apart from
the fact that Great Britain occupies an altogether disproportionately
important place in the Empire which the growth of the other elements
must drastically correct in time—it is, nevertheless, completely at
variance with the history and present prospects of our constitutional
evolution. So far from being a reversal of the process of
constitutional progress which governs British history, it is a fresh
and salutary manifestation of it, and constitutional experts are
increasingly realizing and proclaiming that it is only by a general
extension and speeding-up of this process that the Empire can be
maintained and prevented from sharing the fate of all the other great
centralized Empires of the past. “Empire,” as a matter of fact, is
now a misnomer; the term ought rather to be the “British Association
of Free Peoples.” Upon the development of the utmost freedom of each
and the inter-relations with each other of the various elements in
this great diversity-in-unity the future of the “Empire” depends.
This point of view is admirably expressed by Viscount Dunedin, who
says: “The secret of the tie that unites the Empire—the rock on which
it is built—is the autonomy of local law. And not merely local law,
but autonomy of local law making—in other words—legislation.” And he
pointed out that the Privy Council had been more solicitous of the
principle of legislative autonomy than the Dominions themselves. The
Scottish Home Rule demand is, therefore, strictly in accord with the
very life-spirit of the Empire, and it is the attempt to assimilate
Scottish law and legislation to English and to secure uniformity,
instead of permitting the free development of inherent diversity in
accordance with distinctive national genius that is anti-Imperial.
The opponents of the new Draft Bill cannot have it both ways. The
same type of people have objected to all the previous bills on
the ground that these would only result in transforming Scotland
into a “glorified County Council.” It is the realization of the
truth of this that has prompted the greater demand embodied in the
present Bill. Without the power of the purse a Scottish Parliament
would, indeed, have been a mere glorified County Council, and such
a measure would have completed, instead of reversing, the shameful
provincialization of our country.
The Empire not only stands in no danger from Scotland coming into
line with the other component parts of it, but it will give Scotland
for the first time an effective say and share in Imperial affairs.
Scotland has contributed far too much to the upbuilding of the Empire
to want to withdraw from it. It is, indeed, the very opposite motive
that is at work. It is the recognition of how grossly anomalous it is
that Scotland, which has contributed so preponderantly to Imperial
development, should be relegated to so inferior and ineffective a
place in it, and have no voice in determining and disposing its
future. Scotland has been placed at an intolerable disadvantage
in this connection compared with almost every other part of the
Empire, and the newer developments of autonomy in the Dominions are
relegating Scotland to a more and more subordinate rôle, entirely
out of keeping with its due as one of the great founder nations of
the Empire. The new Bill is designed to rectify matters and accord
to Scotland its due place in the economy of the Empire. Under it,
Scotland will re-acquire a real part in relation to Imperial and
world-affairs. At present it has no effective part in either. The
constitution of the House of Commons is such that the Scottish vote
is subject to the perpetual veto of the English majority, although
English political psychology is profoundly different from Scottish
and the economic conditions and requirements of Scotland profoundly
different from those of England. Scotland, to-day, has no effective
representation anywhere—on the Imperial Conference, on the League of
Nations, on Inter-Parliamentary Delegations and on any of the other
great international bodies which are playing rôles of cumulative
importance in world-affairs: but, given a distinctive place again,
there is every reason to hope that this old historical nation, which
once occupied so notable a place in Europe, and which has been one
of the main sources of our Imperial power, may again play a part
proportionate to its past and in keeping with its particular genius.
What is commonly forgotten, too, in matters of this kind, is that
Scotland itself is part of the Empire. A concern with Scottish
domestic welfare is just as much an Imperial consideration as
preoccupation with the affairs of any other part of the Empire.
The welfare of the Empire depends upon the welfare of each of its
component parts. Scotsmen may help the Empire best by keeping the
heart of it—the source of much that is best in it—sound at home.
Surely it cannot be contended that Imperial policy demands the
dereliction of Scotland? Will it not serve the Empire best in the
future, as it has done in the past, if Scotland can once again become
the home of a vigorous and multiplying people from which the Colonies
overseas can continue to draw robust settlers? The idea that Scottish
Home Rule is at variance with Imperial tendencies and requirements
is, in fact, an erroneous and short-sighted one, while the contrary
opinion is supported by the recollection of the great part Scotland
has played in Imperial affairs in the past—and cannot, assuredly,
continue to play if its population is to be decimated, its
industries ruined, and its countryside depopulated and thrown out of
cultivation. Yet the latter is the effect of the neglect of Scottish
affairs which is the settled—and natural—policy of the overwhelmingly
English House of Commons. It represents a greater menace to the
Empire than any Separatist movement can ever become because it
strikes at the very heart of Imperial strength. The present policy
of encouraging emigration in regard to Scotland is nothing more or
less than a killing by our overseas dominions of the goose which has
hitherto laid many of the best clutches of their golden eggs.
Let me add here that Scotland is not only the most neglected
country in Europe to-day, but the most highly taxed. A vehicular
and passenger bridge across the Forth is refused to Scotland by
Englishmen, but Scots must contribute towards the £7,000,000 or
£8,000,000 granted for a bridge across the Thames. Scotland’s
housing is a disgrace to Western civilization, although Scots
builders are such efficient workmen that they are welcomed in England
and overseas. Scotland has the highest death-rate, the highest
sickness-rate, and the highest infant mortality rate in the British
Isles, although naturally it is no less healthy than England, Ireland
or Wales. Scotland contains 2,000,000 acres of land which are
certified as suitable for cultivation and small holdings, although
during the last ten years her agricultural population decreased by
15,000. There are fewer small holdings in Scotland now than in 1911,
when the Small Landholders Act was passed by the London Parliament.
Like facts can be adduced in regard to every other aspect of Scottish
affairs. They are the inevitable counterparts of her cultural
declinature. Verily “Without the Vision the people perish.”
VI
Several reviewers of the Rt. Hon. H. A. L. Fisher’s biography of
the late Viscount Bryce have expressed their surprise that Bryce
had not at least some measure of practical success with his first
legislative love, the Bill to give free access to Scottish mountains
and moors. As one of them well remarked, “Forty years ago there was
no more popular measure. The mention of it on a public platform never
failed to jog a lackadaisical audience into enthusiasm. How thankful
many a Liberal orator felt that he could wind up by declaring his
‘whole-hearted concurrence in principle and in part with that measure
sponsored by the Member for South Aberdeen, which would give the
people of Scotland freedom to enjoy their health-giving heritage.’ It
was a measure easy to advocate and difficult to oppose, even in the
days before the motor car had driven the pedestrian from the by-ways
as well as the highways. But to this day not one practical step in
its realization has been taken; there is still no legal access to
Scottish mountains and moors.”
It is, indeed, one of the most curious of all puzzles in political
psychology. Of the reality of the need for it, and of the abundance
of public support, there is no question. Why, then, is nothing done?
Whoever can answer that question can explain the whole position of
Scotland to-day. It is not enough that a measure should be clamantly
called for by the needs of the Scottish situation; it is not enough
that the mere mention of it should be sufficient to jog the most
apathetic body of Scottish electors into enthusiasm; it is not enough
that it should have the support of the overwhelming majority of the
Scottish M.P.s of all parties. All these three considerations can be
fulfilled, and have been fulfilled, in respect to Scottish Home Rule
and other questions, and yet not only is nothing at all done, but
the proposed solution never even emerges into what is known as “the
sphere of practical politics.” Why is this?