's clear head and stout heart, Scotland owes, as England owes
likewise, much of her modern liberty. But Scotland's debt to him, it
seems to me, is even greater on the count of morality, public and
private. What the morality of the Scotch upper classes was like, in
Buchanan's early days, is too notorious; and there remains proof
enough--in the writings, for instance, of Sir David Lindsay--that the
morality of the populace, which looked up to the nobles as its example
and its guide, was not a whit better. As anarchy increased, immorality
was likely to increase likewise; and Scotland was in serious danger of
falling into such a state as that into which Poland fell, to its ruin,
within a hundred and fifty years after; in which the savagery of
feudalism, without its order or its chivalry, would be varnished over by
a thin coating of French "civilisation," and, as in the case of Bothwell,
the vices of the court of Paris should be added to those of the Northern
freebooter. To deliver Scotland from that ruin, it was needed that she
should be united into one people, strong, not in mere political, but in
moral ideas; strong by the clear sense of right and wrong, by the belief
in the government and the judgments of a living God. And the tone which
Buchanan, like Knox, adopted concerning the great crimes of their day,
helped notably that national salvation. It gathered together, organised,
strengthened, the scattered and wavering elements of public morality. It
assured the hearts of all men who loved the right and hated the wrong;
and taught a whole nation to call acts by their just names, whoever might
be the doers of them. It appealed to the common conscience of men. It
proclaimed a universal and God-given morality, a bar at which all, from
the lowest to the highest, must alike be judged.

The tone was stern: but there was need of sternness. Moral life and
death were in the balance. If the Scots people were to be told that the
crimes which roused their indignation were excusable, or beyond
punishment, or to be hushed up and slipped over in any way, there was an
end of morality among them. Every man, from the greatest to the least,
would go and do likewise, according to his powers of evil. That method
was being tried in France, and in Spain likewise, during those very
years. Notorious crimes were hushed up under pretence of loyalty;
excused as political necessities; smiled away as natural and pardonable
weaknesses. T