PREFATORY REMARKS.

THOUGH the dialect, in which many of the happiest effusions of Robert Burns are composed, be peculiar to Scotland, yet his reputation has extended itself beyond the limits of that country, and his poetry has been admired as the offspring of original genius, by persons of taste, in every part of the sister islands. The interest excited by his early death, and the distress of his infant family, has been felt in a remarkable manner, wherever his writings have been known; and these posthumous volumes, which give to the world his Works complete, and which, it is hoped, may raise his Widow and Children from penury, are printed and published in England. It seems proper, therefore, to write the memoirs of his life, not with the view of their being read by Scotchmen only, but also by natives of England, and of other countries where the English language is spoken or understood.

Robert Burns was, in reality, what he has been represented to be, a Scottish peasant. To render the incidents of his humble story generally intelligible, it seems, therefore, advisable to prefix some observations on the character and situation of the order to which he belonged-a class of men distinguished by many peculiarities: by this means we shall form a more correct notion of the advantages with which he started, and of the obstacles which he surmounted. A few observations on the Scottish peasantry will not, perhaps, be found unworthy of attention in other respects: and the subject is, in a great measure, new. Scotland has produced persons of high distinction in every branch of philosophy and literature; and her history, while a separate and independent nation, has been successfully explored. But the present character of the people was not then formed; the nation then presented features similar to those which the feudal system and the Catholic religion had diffused over Europe, modified, indeed, by the

peculiar nature of her territory and climate. The Reformation, by which such important changes were produced on the national character, was speedily followed by the Accession of the Scottish monarchs to the English throne; and the period which elapsed from that Accession to the Union has been rendered memorable, chiefly by those bloody convulsions in which both divisions of the island were involved, and which in a considerable degree, concealed from the eye of the historian the domestic history of the people, and the gradual variations in their condition and manners. Since the Union, Scotland, though the seat of two unsuccessful attempts to restore the House of Stuart to the throne, has enjoyed a comparative tranquillity; and it is since this period that the present character of her peasantry has been in a great measure formed, though the political causes affecting it are to be traced to the previous acts of her separate legislature.

A slight acquaintance with the peasantry of Scotland will serve to convince an unprejudiced observer, that they possess a degree of intelligence not generally found among the same class of men in the other countries of Europe. In the very humblest condition of the Scottish peasants, every one can read, and most persons are more or less skilled in writing and arithmetic; and, under the disguise of their uncouth appearance, and of their peculiar manners and dialect, a stranger will discover that they possess a curiosity, and have obtained a degree of information, corresponding to these acquirements.

These advantages they owe to the legal provision made by the parliament of Scotland in 1616, for the establishment of a school in every parish throughout the kingdom, for the express purpose of educating the poor; a law which may challenge comparison with any act of legislation to be found in the records of history, whether we consider the wisdom of the ends in view, the simplicity of the means

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employed, or the provisions made to render these means effectual to their purpose. This excellent statute was repealed on the accession of Charles II. in 1660, together with all the other laws passed during the commonwealth, as not being sanctioned by the royal assent. It slept during the reigns of Charles and James, but was re-enacted precisely in the same terms, by the Scottish parliament, after the Revolution in 1696; and this is the last provision on the subject. Its effects on the national character may be considered to have commenced about the period of the Union; and doubtless it co-operated with the peace and security arising from that happy event, in producing the extraordinary change in favour of industry and good morals, which the character of the common people of Scotland has since undergone. *

*The importance of the national establishment of parish-schools in Scotland will justify a short account of the legislative provisions respecting it, especially as the subject has escaped the notice of all the historians. By an act of the king (James VI.) and privy council of the 10th of December, 1816, it was recommended to his bishops to deale and travel with the heritors (land proprietors,) and the inhabitants of the respective parishes in their respective dioceses, towards the fixing upon "some certain, solid, and sure course" for settling and entertaining a school in each parish. This was ratified by a statute of Charles I. (the act 1633, chap. 5.) which empowered the bishop, with the consent of the heritors of a parish, or of a majority of the inhabitants, if the heritors refused to attend the meeting, to assess every plough of land (that is, every farm, in proportion to the number of ploughs upon it) with a certain sum for establishing a school. This was an ineffectual provision, as depending on the consent and pleasure of the heritors and inhabitants. Therefore a new order of things was introduced by Stut. 1646, chap. 17, which obliges the heritors and minister of each parish to meet and assess the several heritors with the requisite sum for building a school-house, and to elect a schoolmaster, and modify a salary for him in all time to come. The salary is ordered not to be under one hundred, nor above two hundred merks, that is, in our preseut sterling money, not under £5 11s. 1d. nor above £11 28. 3d. and the assessment is to be laid on the land in the same proportion as it is rated for the support of the clergy, and as it regulates the payment of the land-tax. But in case the heritors of any parish, or the majority of them, should fail to discharge this duty, then the persons forming what is called the Committee of Supply of the county (consisting of the principal landholders,) or any five of them, are authorized by the statute to impose the assessment instead of them, on the representation of the presbytery in which the parish is situated. To secure the choice of a proper teacher, the right of election by the heritors, by a statute passed in 1693, chap. 22, is made subject to the review and control of the presbytery of the district, who have the examination of the person proposed committed to them, both as to his qualifications as a teacher, and as to his proper deportment in the office when settled in it. The elec tion of the heritors is therefore only a presentment of a person for the approbation of the presbytery; who, if they find him unfit, may declare his incapacity, and thus oblige them to elect anew. So far is stated on unquestionable authority. *

The legal salary of the schoolmaster was not inconsiderable at the time it was fixed; but by the decrease in the value of money, it is now certainly inadequate to its object; and it is painful to observe, that the landholders of Scotland resisted the humble application of the schoolmasters to the legislature for its increase, a few years ago. The number of parishes in Scotland is 877; and if we allow the salary of a schoolmaster in each to be on an average, seven pounds sterling, the amount of the legal provision will be £6,139 sterling.

*The authority of A. Frazer Tytler, and David Hume, Esqrs.

The church-establishment of Scotland happily coincides with the institution just mentioned, which may be called its school-establishment. The clergyman, being every where

to twice this sum, which is probably beyond the truth, If we suppose the wages paid by the scholars to amount the total of the expenses among 1,526,492 persons (the whole population of Scotland,) of this most important establishment, will be £18,417. But on this, as well as on other subjects respecting Scotland, accurate informa tion may soon be expected from Sir John Sinclair's Analysis of his Statistics, which will complete the immortal monument he has reared to his patriotism.

The benefit arising in Scotland from the instruction of the poor, was soon felt; and by an act of the British parliament, 4 Geo. I. chap. 6, it is enacted, "that of the moneys arising from the sale of the Scottish estates forfeited in the rebellion of 1715, £2,000 sterling shall be converted into a capital stock, the interest of which shall be laid out in erecting and maintaining schools in the Highlands. The Society for propagating Christian Knowledge, incorporated in 1709, have applied a large part of their fund for the same purpose. By their report, 1st May, 1795, the annual sum employed by them, in supporting their schools in the Highlands and Islands, was £3,913 19s. 10d., in which are taught the English language, reading and writing, and the principles of religion. The schools of the society are additional to the legal schools, which, from the great extent of many of the Highland parishes, were found insufficient. Be sides these established schools, the lower classes of people in Scotland, where the parishes are large, often combine together, and establish private schools of their own, at one of which it was that Burns received the principal part of his education. So convinced indeed are the poor people of Scotland, by experience, of the benefit of instruction to their children, that, though they may often find it difficult to feed and clothe them, some kind of school-instruction they almost always procure them.

The influence of the school-establishment of Scotland on the peasantry of that country, seems to have decided by experience a question of legislation of the utmost importance-whether a system of national instructior for the poor be favourable to morals and good govern ment. In the year 1698, Fletcher of Salton declared as follows: "There are at this day in Scotland, two hundred thousand people begging from door to door. And though the number of them be perhaps double to what it was formerly, by reason of this present great distress (a famine then prevailed,) yet in all times there have been about one hundred thousand of those vagabonds, who have lived without any regard or subjection either to the laws of the land, or even those of God and Nature; fathers incestuously accompanying with their own daughters, the son with the mother, and the bro ther with the sister." He goes on to say, that no magistrate ever could discover that they had ever been baptized, or in what way one in a hundred went out of the world. He accuses them as frequently guilty of robbery, and sometimes of murder: "In years of plenty," says he, "many thousands of them meet toge ther in the mountains, where they feast and riot for many days; and at country weddings, markets, burials, and other public occasions, they are to be seen, both men and women, perpetually drunk, cursing, blaspheming, and fighting together." This high-minded statesman, of whom it is said by a contemporary "that he would lose his life readily to save his country, and would not do a base thing to serve it," thought the evil so great that he proposed as a remedy, the revival of domestic slavery, according to the practice of his adored republics in the classic ages! A better remedy has been found, which in the silent lapse of a century has proved effec tual. The statute of 1696, the noble legacy of the Scottish Parliament to their country, began soon after this to operate; and happily, as the minds of the poor received instruction, the Union opened new channels of industry, and new fields of action to their view.

At the present day there is perhaps no country in Europe, in which, in proportion to its population, so small a number of crimes fall under the chastisement of the criminal law, as Scotland. We have the best authority for asserting, that on an average of thirty years,

* Political Works of Andrew Fletcher, octavo, London, 1737

p. 144.