SCOTI.AND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 33 



mendous strides, until from being merely somewhat 

 in advance of other countries by reason of the num- 

 ber of schools, the educational advantages of Scot- 

 land became the just subject of the boasting of 

 every patriotic Scotchman. When Dorothy Words- 

 worth traveled through Scotland with her brother 

 in 1803, she remarked with wonder that even among 

 the highland wilds the children were fairly well 

 taught. The excellent results of this teaching is 

 bountifully witnessed by the lives of the scholars 

 who were trained under it and afterward came to 

 America. Scotland's debt to her schools, poor as 

 some of them no doubt were, can scarcely be over- 

 estimated, and to them without question was due in 

 large part the greatness of the strides which the 

 country was making in the latter part of the eigh- 

 teenth century. 



The prosperity of Scotland as a nation at this 

 later period is astonishingly illustrated by compara- 

 tive figures. The imports in 1775 were only £465,- 

 411 as compared with £1,981,630 in 1791. The re- 

 spective figures for the exports of the same years 

 are £535,576 and £1,269,520. Both exports and 

 imports continued to grow at an amazing rate every 

 year with the exception of 1795, the year after Wil- 

 son left Scotland, when the former fell to more than 

 £700,000 less than they had been for four years pre- 

 vious and the latter showed a decrease of nearly 

 £300,000.* This was perhaps due to the hard 

 times which were partly instrumental in driving 

 Wilson to America. Wages increased and "the ma- 



* Chambers's Gazetteer of Scotland, 1844. 

 3 



