t educated
men identify themselves with "the rascal and uninstructed populace,"
whenever they indulge on behalf of the selfish interests of their own
class, passions such as he had indulged in fighting for his brother's
pension. It is not the want of instruction, it is the rascaldom, i. e.
the violent _esprit de corps_ of a selfish class, which "naturally
leads" to violent remedies. Such rascaldom exists in all classes, and
not least in the class of the cultivated and refined. Generous and
magnanimous as Scott was, he was evidently by no means free from the
germs of it.

One more illustration of Scott's political Conservatism, and I may
leave his political life, which was not indeed his strong side,
though, as with all sides of Scott's nature, it had an energy and
spirit all his own. On the subject of Catholic Emancipation he took a
peculiar view. As he justly said, he hated bigotry, and would have
left the Catholics quite alone, but for the great claims of their
creed to interfere with political life. And even so, when the penal
laws were once abolished, he would have abolished also the
representative disabilities, as quite useless, as well as very
irritating when the iron system of effective repression had ceased.
But he disapproved of the abolition of the political parts of the
penal laws. He thought they would have stamped out Roman Catholicism;
and whether that were just or unjust, he thought it would have been a
great national service. "As for Catholic Emancipation," he wrote to
Southey in 1807, "I am not, God knows, a bigot in religious matters,
nor a friend to persecution; but if a particular set of religionists
are _ipso facto_ connected with foreign politics, and placed under the
spiritual direction of a class of priests, whose unrivalled dexterity
and activity are increased by the rules which detach them from the
rest of the world--I humbly think that we may be excused from
entrusting to them those places in the State where the influence of
such a clergy, who act under the direction of a passive tool of our
worst foe, is likely to be attended with the most fatal consequences.
If a gentleman chooses to walk about with a couple of pounds of
gunpowder in his pocket, if I give him the shelter of my roof, I may
at least be permitted to exclude him from the seat next to the
fire."[49] And in relation to the year 1825, when Scott visited
Ireland, Mr. Lockhart writes, "He on all occasions expressed manfully
his bel