reading _Malagrowther_,
even after reading Scott's own Diary and letters on the subject. As he
there explains, he was not greatly carried, as a rule, to interest
himself in the details of politics. As both Lockhart and he admit, he
might not have been so interested even at this juncture had it not
been for the chagrin at his own misfortunes, which, nobly and
stoically repressed as it was, required some issue. But his general
principle on this occasion was clear; it can be thoroughly apprehended
and appreciated even by an Englishman of Englishmen. It was thoroughly
justified by the event, and, I may perhaps be permitted to observe,
ran exactly contrary to a sentiment rather widely adopted of late. No
man, whether in public writings or private conduct, could be more set
than Scott was against a spurious Scotch particularism. He even earned
from silly Scots maledictions for the chivalrous justice he dealt to
England in _The Lord of the Isles_, and the common-sense justice he
dealt to her in the mouth of Bailie Jarvie. But he was not more
staunch for the political Union than he was for the preservation of
minor institutions, manners, and character; and the proposed
interference with Scotch banking seemed to him to be one of the things
tending to make good Scotchmen, as he bluntly told Croker, 'damned
mischievous Englishmen.' Therefore he arose and spoke, and though he
averted the immediate attempt, yet the prophecies which he uttered
were amply fulfilled in other ways after the Reform Bill.

These, then, are the principles on which I have selected the pieces
that follow (some minor reasons for the particular choices being given
in the special introductions):--That they should be pamphlets proper
(_Malachi_ appeared first in a newspaper, but that was a sign of the
time chiefly, and the numbers of Cobbett's _Register_ were practically
independent pieces); that they should deal with special subjects of
burning political, and not merely personal, interest; and that they
should either directly or in the long-run have exercised an actual
determining influence on the course of politics and history. This last
point is undoubted in the case of the examples from Halifax, Swift,
Burke (who more than any one man pointed and steeled the resistance
of England to Jacobin tyranny), and Scott; it was less immediate, but
scarcely more dubious in those of Defoe, Cobbett, and Sydney Smith.
And so in all humility I make my bow as introducer onc