BURNS ON PEACE AND WAR. R 66 OBERT BURNS was one of those rare men whose various activities touch life at almost every point, and one who wishes to fully understand what he said and did must enter upon a pretty complete study of the period in which he lived. This would not have been necessary had he sought his inspiration mainly in the emotions which stir the hearts of men and women. Such feelings are peculiar to neither time nor place. They have their seat and centre in the human breast in all ages and in all climes, and may be understood without any reference to outside events and incidents. But Burns found a good deal of his material in his environment-in the rural employments in which he and his neighbours were engaged, in the amusements which occupied their scanty hours of leisure, in the experiences which occurred to them from day to day, in the political and ecclesiastical problems which they were called upon to solve, and in a variety of other directions which must suggest themselves to the reader. It is not possible to grasp the whole, or anything like the whole, of the meaning of Burns when he treated such themes unless one knows what was the social, ecclesiastical, and political condition of Scotland in the latter half of the eighteenth century, the period which directly influenced the Poet, and which, in turn, was directly influenced by him. This is an aspect of Burns which I discussed in an article on "Burns interpreted in the light of his own times," contributed to the Burns Chronicle in 1910, but I have by no means exhausted the material at the disposal of one who thus studies the work of the National Bard, and my object in preparing this paper is to consider a branch of the subject on which I have not yet touched. "Burns on Peace and War is a political theme; but it is not one in the treatment of which the Poet confined himself to the affairs of his native country. In the days of Burns Scotland had been for nearly two centuries an integral part of Great Britain, which even at that time was a mighty empire, and when we find him writing on peace and war we must not think of him only as the National Poet of Scotland, giving expression to national sentiments and aspirations, but as one of the great forces of the British empire, in shaping the destinies of which he felt that he must take some part, even though his conduct-misunderstood and misinterpreted— should provoke the rebuke of those who were officially his superiors. It is hardly necessary to tell readers of a publication of this kind that while Burns was a careful student of the history, the literature, and the philosophy of Scotland, and as well acquainted with the present as he was with the past, he was also a diligent reader of contemporary history, and though the information conveyed to him through the newspapers which then existed was of the scantiest character, it was the best that could be got, and it was sufficient to keep him abreast of the main events that were taking place in England, on the Continent, and in America. How stirring those events were must be realised by every one who possesses any historical knowledge at all. When the differences between Great Britain and the American Colonies reached a crisis in 1775, and war broke out between peoples with the same blood in their veins, Burns was a boy of 14, and I can hardly think that one who had read with such avidity the record of the struggles of his own country for political independence did not, young as he was, eagerly seize upon every scrap of information which he could find regarding the terrible contest which was taking place on the other side of the Atlantic. There is no doubt, at any rate, that in early manhood, when the Americans had declared their independence, although it had not been acknowledged by the British Parliament, Burns followed intelligently the progress of the war, and also watched with interest-doubtless with anxiety and fearthe attack which France and Spain-the Bourbon powershad made upon Britain in the time of her weakness and peril. Burns saw, too, the beginning of the French Revolution, and as a result of that upheaval he was again witness of a war between Great Britain and France, a struggle which, though he did not live to see it, was ended only on the field of Waterloo. Truly those were times when the strength of Great Britain was tested to a degree of which we have no personal experience and every reader can remember the South African War-and strange indeed would it have been had Robert Burns, with his love of freedom, and his hatred of oppression, not been deeply affected by the great events which were passing before him, and been moved to give poetical expression to the thoughts which were in his own heart, and in the hearts of the best of his fellow-countrymen One does not need to be profoundly acquainted with the works of Burns to see the influence which all these struggles had upon him-there is a good deal about peace and war in both the poems and the letters, and more about war than peace -but what he wrote was not always suggested by the wars of his time, and in considering the subject I shall deal with it as a whole, and not with any particular part of it. 66 Before proceeding further I might say that Burns believed he had fighting blood in his veins. In his " Address to William Tytler" he wrote, with reference to the name of Stuart 66 My fathers that name have revered on a throne, 66 Then we find this verse in his Address to Edinburgh Ev'n I who sing in rustic lore, Haply my sires have left their shed Bold following where your fathers led." The martial spirit in him manifested itself very early, as witness his letter to Dr Moore, in which he says: The life of Hannibal gave my young ideas such a turn that I used to strut in raptures up and down after the recruiting drum and bagpipe, and wished myself tall enough that I might be a soldier." And when" fickle fortune," after fair promises, perfo med ill, it was in the army that Burns thought he might find employment and support. Said he : "O why the deuce should I repine, I'm twenty-three, and five-feet-nine- I gat some gear wi' meikle care, I held it wee thegither; But noo its gane, and something mair— I'll go and be a sodger." Burns hon stly admired a soldier, and in one of his songs he paid him this ‹ompliment— "For gold the merchant p.oughs the main The farmer ploughs the manor; But glory is the sodger's prize, The sodger's wealth is honour : But to return to the point where I left off. There is not a great deal about the American War of Independence in the works of Burns, and this, of course, must be accounted for by the fact that his poetical powers had not developed while that unfortunate struggle was in progress. The first reference which he made to the war, so far as I can find, is contained in a letter which he addressed to his cousin, James Burness, writer, Montrose, on the 21st of June, 1783, a year after terms of peace had been signed. In that communication he describes the present wretched state of this country." 66 66 "Our markets," he says, are exceedingly high-oatmeal, 17d and 18d per peck, and not to be got even at that price. We have, indeed, been pretty well supplied with quantities of white peas from England and elsewhere, but that resource is likely to fail us, and what will become of us then, particularly the very poorest sort, Heaven only knows. This country till of late was flourishing incredibly in the manufacture of silk, lawn, and carpet weaving, and we are still carrying on a good deal in that way, but much reduced from what it was. We had also a fine trade in the shoe way, but now entirely ruined, and hundreds driven to a starving condition on account of it. Farming is also at a very low ebb with us. Our lands, generally speaking, are mountainous and barren, and our landholders, full of ideas of farming gathered from England and the Lothians and other rich soils in Scotland, make no allowance for the odds of the quality of the land, and consequently stretch us much beyond what, in the event, we will be found able to pay. We are also much at a loss for want of proper methods in our improvements of farming. Necessity compel us to leave our old schemes, and few of us have opportunities of being well informed in new ones. In short, since the unfortunate beginning of this American War, and its as unfortunate conclusion, this country has been, and still is, decaying very fast." This narrative of Burns is not corroborated by Professor Hume Brown in his History of Scotland recently completed. In the third volume of that work Professor Brown, dealing with the material prosperity of Scotland from 1745 to 1789, says that "the period was marked by an increase in her various industries, by an extension of her trade, and by construction of public works unexampled at any previous time." Who is right and who is wrong it is not my duty to discuss ; but should the view be taken that Burns, in the concluding sentence of the quotation which I have just given, was referring to Great Britain, and not only to Scotland, he was |