them; and leave those improvements to burghers of towns, who, for
want of a sufficient stock, are not able to carry it on.

Indeed, the nobility have of late run into parking, planting, and
gardening, which are great improvements of their estates; but what is
this to the bulk of a nation, which (if encouraged) hath as many natural
commodities for exportation as any whatsoever, and more than
South-Britain? But a finer education than what is necessary for trade,
hath been, in imitation of the French, the misfortune of this kingdom;
but perhaps the union with England may open their eyes to their own
interest.

The language of the Low-Countries of Scotland is the same with that
which is spoken all over England; only an Englishman will understand a
Scotchman better by his writing than speaking; for the difference in the
pronunciation of the vowels, which are the same in writing, makes a
great alteration in speaking.

The Scots pronounce the five vowels, a, e, i, o, u, just as the French,
Germans, and Italians do; and the English, according to that
pronunciation, make them [oe], i, y, o, u. This difference of sound in
the vowels, makes a great one in the pronunciation.

The Highlanders have a language of their own, which the Irish own to be
the purest of that Irish which they spake in the province of Ulster in
Ireland; which is also spoken in the greatest purity in the Western
Islands that lie between Scotland and Ireland: They being an unmixed
people, have preserved that language and the dress better than the Irish
have done, who have been over-run with Danes, English, etc.

FOOTNOTES:

[77] About.

[78] The Lyon King-at-Arms.

THE MALT TAX (1725).

+Source.+--_The Lockhart Papers: containing Memoirs and Commentaries
upon the Affairs of Scotland from 1702 to 1715, by George Lockhart,
Esq., of Carnwath. His Secret Correspondence with the Son of King
James the Second from 1718 to 1728, and his other Political
Writings_, vol. ii., p. 134. (London: 1817.)

About the latter end of the year 1724 a resolution passed the House of
Commons whereby, instead of the malt tax, six pence per barrel of ale
was laid of additional duty on Scotland (and not extended to England)
and the premiums on grain exported from thence was taken off. As this
was a plain breach of the Union, in so far as it expressly stipulated
that there shall be an equality of taxes and premiums on trade, every
Scots man was hi