Note 373 — Chapter III

The Scotch, consequently, became so eager to do away with this source of mirth, that even as late as the year 1761, when the notorious lecturer, Sheridan, visited Edinburgh, ‘such was the rage for speaking with an English accent, that more than three hundred gentlemen, among whom were the most eminent in the country for rank and learning, attended him.’ Ritchie's Life of Hume, London, 1807, p. 94. It was, however, during about twenty years immediately after the Union, that the Scotch members of Parliament, both Lords and Commons, were most jeered at in London, and were treated with marked disrespect, socially and politically. Not only were they mocked and lampooned, but they were also made tools of. In September 1711, Wodrow writes (Analecta, vol. i. p. 348, 4to, 1842): ‘In the beginning of this (month), I hear a generall dissatisfaction our Nobility, that wer at last Parliament, have at their treatment at London. They complean they are only made use of as tools among the English, and cast by when their party designes are over.’ The next year (1712), the Scotch members of the House of Commons met together, and expressed their ‘high resentment of the uncivil, haughty treatment they mett with from the English.’ The Lockhart Papers, London, 1817, 4to, vol. i. p. 417. See, further, Burton's History of Scotland, vol. ii. p. 27. ‘Without descending to rudeness, the polished contemporaries of Wharton and St. John could madden the sensitive and haughty Scots by light shafts of raillery, about their pronunciation or knowledge of parliamentary etiquette.’ Some curious observations upon the way in which the Scotch pronounced English, late in the seventeenth century, will be found in Morer's Short Account of Scotland, London, 1702, pp. 13, 14. The author of this book was chaplain to a Scotch regiment.