SCOTTISH HISTORY. 165 



chief blessings, we thank Wallace withal that it was not 

 the chief curse. Scotland is not Ireland : no, because 

 brave men rose there, and said, " Behold, ye must not 

 tread us down like slaves ; and ye shall not and 

 cannot ! " ' 



Among the laws embodied in the moral government 

 of the world, few seem more clearly legible, and none 

 more stern, than this, that the nation which inflicts 

 wrong upon another nation, and the nation which sin- 

 fully submits to the wrong inflicted, shall both of them, 

 through long ages of suffering, expiate their crime. The 

 nation which did not rise and tear its fetters from its 

 limbs before they were welded on unalterably, has suffer- 

 ed the pangs of immedicable hatred and of burning thirst 

 for revenge, pangs which distemper the whole body poli- 

 tic. The nation which, in mere lust of conquest, tram- 

 pled its neighbour into the dust, has found its best sub- 

 sequent efforts to do justice and show kindness frustrated 

 by the embittered spirit of the vanquished. Infinite, 

 therefore, is the obligation under which both nations con- 

 cerned lie to those men who saved them from centuries of 

 penal animosity. The gratitude due by Scotchmen to Bruce 

 and Wallace and their heroic compatriots is but one 

 degree more ardent than that due to them by Englishmen. 



The other factor in Scottish history is the Reform- 

 ation of the Church under Knox. In his enthusiastic 

 recognition of what the Reformation did for his country, 

 Mr Carlyle appears to forget for the moment what he 

 had said of Wallace. ' The history of Scotland,' he tells 

 us in his lecture on the Scottish Reformer, ' contains 

 nothing of world-interest at all, but this Reformation of 

 Knox.' His own words, which we have just seen, are 

 an eloquent assertion of the world-interest and world- 

 significance of the Scottish war of independence ; and 



