But when I
speak of Scott as a Home-Ruler, I should add that had not Scotland
been for generations governed to a great extent, and, as he thought
successfully, by Home-Rule, he was far too good a Conservative to have
apologized for it at all. The basis of his Conservatism was always the
danger of undermining a system which had answered so well. In the
concluding passages of the letters to which I have just referred, he
contrasts "Theory, a scroll in her hand, full of deep and mysterious
combinations of figures, the least failure in any one of which may
alter the result entirely," with "a practical system successful for
upwards of a century." His vehement and unquailing opposition to
Reform in almost the very last year of his life, when he had already
suffered more than one stroke of paralysis, was grounded on precisely
the same argument. At Jedburgh, on the 21st March, 1831, he appeared
in the midst of an angry population (who hooted and jeered at him till
he turned round fiercely upon them with the defiance, "I regard your
gabble no more than the geese on the green,") to urge the very same
protest.
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