THE SCOTCH-IRISH OF THE SOUTH...continued

BY HON. WM. WIRT HENRY, LL.D., OF VIRGINIA

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The history of the English, the Dutch, and the French settlers, who united to found the United States, is of the deepest interest, exhibiting, as it does, the dealings of God in preparing a suitable population for this great republic. But on this occasion, our thoughts are turned to but one of the peoples to whom the world is indebted for the America of to-day, with all of its grand achievements in the past and its power for incalculable good in the future.

The kingdom of Scotland, first known as "Scotia Minor," was settled by the ancient race of Celts, who came over from Ireland, then known as "Scotia Major." But, in the course of time, this rude people were almost entirely supplanted by, when not commingled with, the sturdy race from the south of the Tweed, the admixture of the Norman and Saxon, with a slight infusion of Danish blood. Says Macaulay: "The population of Scotland, with the exception of the Celtic tribes, which were thinly scattered over the Hebrides and over the northern parts of the mountainous shires, was of the same blood with the population of England, and spoke a tongue which did not differ from the purest English more than the dialects of Somersetshire and Lancashire differ from each other."

The air and food north of the Tweed, and the Celtic infusion, as years rolled around, gave the distinguishing characteristics of the Scotch people, and intensified in them the noble traits of the English--stern integrity, high sense of duty, hatred of tyranny, and devotion to God.

Presbyterianism, after a long and bloody struggle with Romanism, was at last established on its soil, in the sixteenth century, under the leadership of that great man "who never feared the face of clay." the brave John Knox, who laid the foundations of a free and well-ordered church so broad and deep that Scotland has ever since remained Presbyterian to the core. When asked by Queen Mary, "Think you that subjects, having power, may resist their princes?" his memorable reply was, "If princes exceed their bounds, madam, no doubt they may be resisted even by power." This Froude styles "the creed of republics in its first hard form." It contained the germ of American liberty. His mantle fell on a worthy successor, Andrew Melville, who, in his noble rebuke to King James, proclaimed that principle of religious freedom which has ever been characteristic of the Scotch church, and which developed into the complete divorce of church and state in America.

Said he: "There are two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland. There is King James, the head of this commonwealth, and there is Christ Jesus, the king of the church, whose subject James the Sixth is, and of whose kingdom he is not a king, nor a lord, nor a head, but a member. We will yield to your place, and give you all due obedience. But again I say, you are not the head of the church."

Under the influence of general education and a pure Christianity, the Scotch character developed to the greatest excellency yet attained by civilization. Nothing has ever surpassed the peasant life described by Burns in "The Cotter's Saturday Night," or the Scottish lords and ladies pictured by the pen of Sir Walter Scott.

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