The Nineteenth Century in Scotland presents more than
the usual quota of difficulties which beset the student of fairly recent modern history. There is an overwhelming amount of
available material; there is a confused and expanding activity
which requires interpretation, and any interpretation, however
cautious, is bound to have its limitations and dangers. At
one extreme is the detailed local interest which never risks a generalisation; at the other the easy acceptance of an inherited view as an adequate summary of a complex century. Yet in
modern as in ancient times, the myth has its significance and
the one which regards Scottish democratic sentiment as the most
characteristic expression of the nation in the 19th century has
some justification. At least, it is worth examination.
If the democratic idea is the major theme, it is one
that is not easy to define. It has both a general and a local
aspect. The Scottish movement in the first half of the 19th
century was part of a West European and Trans -Atlantic change
of attitude and value which was expressed in generalisations
drawn from the experience of the later 1óth century. At the
same time these universals acquired a local meaning. They
were bound to a particular environment and tradition which they
helped to change; they carried a current of sentiment and unified a diffused irritation. In the case of Scotland they were
applied to the circumstances of a small country as self- conscious
as Switzerland or the Netherlands or New England but one that
was at the same time increasingly caught up in a wider movement
of change. The problem is to realise the particular meaning
of the great generalisations in this specific local and temporal situation.
For the purposes of this exposition a simple ad hoc
definition of democracy is sufficient. I have taken two
positions as typical of the place and the period. The first
is that a democratic society was desirable as securing equality
of opportunity and a consequent social mobility, as opposed to
the privilege and fixity of an ancien regime. The second is
to the effect that a democratic society would be distinguished
by a peculiar quality of living: that each component individual would be able to become a person, enlightened and responsable: that a common culture would be shared and so shared
would both satisfy and unite. This was asserted against an
aristocratic pattern of living that was regarded as exclusive
and immoral. In the first half of the 19th century these two
democratic principles were regarded as compatible. It was assumed that a society which applied them would be a just and
harmonious one: its members would be at once free, rational
and amiable. It would be a society of equals and friends, so that the agencies of coercion would wither away as unnecessary
or be rejected as perverting and tyrannical.
These optimistic assumptions have to be examined in
relation to Scottish developments during a limited period, that
of the post -war generation, from the approach of peace in 1814
through the ascending arc of the Reform movement to the economic crisis of 1837. The developments have to be selected as
being both of intrinsic importance and in some way testing the
democratic assumptions. I have examined four. The first is
the change in Scottish rural life from 1815 to 1830 as affecting the range of opportunity and the quality of living in the
countryside. The second is the urban and industrial expansion
of the period, not yet grasped in its entirety or generalised
as "urbanism" or "industrialism" but exhibiting a confusing
range of success and failure. The third theme is the creation
of an urban way of living, a problem which precedes the industrial one in the public consciousness and which is given special prominence in the Scottish Lowlands by the contrasting developments of Edinburgh and Glasgow. The last subject is the role
assigned to education, both primary and higher, in a changing
society which had inherited a Reforming emphasis on the public
provision of schooling. In this last connection I have examined the position of the Scottish universities and paid some
attention to the expansion of the Scottish professional classes
as one of the most important developments of the period.
The years between 1814 and 1837 are characterised by
a multiform activity. This must be conveyed since it helps, to
explain the intellectual difficulties and limitations of the reforming movements. In the countryside a new regime is spreading, but only partially; in the towns, the extremes of wealth
and poverty, virtue and dissipation face each other; the
country prides itself on its intellectual tradition and its
educational facilities yet in the mid -Thirties Scotland was accused of being "a half- educated nation". It is surely necessary to attempt to reconstruct the confusing range of experience
in this place and age, the contrasts between expectation and
actuality that help to explain the hesitancies, the indifference,
the complacency, which puzzle or antagonise those who a century
later can see how things were going and what ought to have been
done.
I have therefore tried to let the period speak directly for itself. The exposition has been constructed from contemporary material. In the fairly elaborate notes I have indicated where the information comes from. Occasionally a point
in the text has been developed or illustrated by the use of
quotation. I hope I have been able to make clear the relevance
of the treatment to the two guiding principles enunciated previously without calling attention to the connection at every
step.
Some omissions have to be explained as deliberate.
For example, the examination of the way of living of such working-class groups as the weavers, the cotton spinners and the
miners is limited, and the special development of working -class
culture in such towns as Paisley or Dunfermline is inadequately
treated. Nor in the discussion on education have I considered
the experience of the self -educated like Robert and William
Chambers or the adult education movement in the towns or the
amateur scientists like Hugh Miller or Robert Dick. But I am
at present concerned only with the institutional environment and
the problems it presented. It is hoped to be able to examine
the positive movement of democratic idea and policy later and
in detail.
I am very conscious of the difficulties of the subject.
A local enthusiasm will at once detect the limitations of the
treatment and be able to cite proof or disproof or to supply
more convincing illustration. Nothing can replace that intangible quality of familiarity with a landscape, a town, an
institution or a tradition which comes to those who have lived
and worked with it. But the rashness of a more general view
may be justified if it evokes a local criticism based on a more
intimate knowledge.