Almost everything that Burns ever wrote was political, in the broadest sense of that word. Even his refurbishing of traditional love-songs can be subsumed under that head, for he regarded their collection and arrangement as a patriotic, that is, as a political act. The central core of all his thought was his exploration of the Scottish predicament. He belonged to a nation which had lost its independence but was at the same time part of a larger state in whose successes he could rejoice and in whose better government he was interested, so that his patriotism was always of a peculiarly double sort. His attachment to what, for want of a better word, must be termed his class, that is, to the lower orders, broadly conceived, reinforced and buttressed his nationalism. Take, for example, Caledonia's lament in the ninth stanza of the Elegy on the Death of Sir James Hunter Blair,

This is nationalistic enough, and addressed to an upper-class audience; yet it is rhetoric of the same kind as the minstrel's apostrophe of Liberty in As I stood by yon roofless Tower. In the latter, Liberty is in part a social concept, freedom from restraint; in the Elegy, it is national freedom, but quite clearly the two are connected.

The Prologue spoken by Mr Woods on his Benefit Night, contains further praise of the national revival. There is one especially interesting passage making explicit those conceptions which are allegorically conveyed in The Vision

We are, I think, entitled to use as evidence certain Jacobite songs which Burns altered or touched up in the late seventeen-eighties. They show that he was emotionally affected by them to the extent of being able to enter into the spirit of the originals, although it is extremely difficult as always with the songs to say where tradition leaves off, and Burns (or one of his personae) begins. Such a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation is a song about the historical challenge which was the ultimate cause of the national revival the situation caused by the Act of Union, which stimulated the men of subsequent generations to try to beat the English in the only sphere now open to them, the arts of peace, even if it sometimes meant that they anglified themselves in the process. ( See also EssayDialect for more on this ) It is in character, for one must imagine it as sung by an opponent of the Union, and it shows Burns working in the spirit of his source-material to produce an imaginative reconstruction of a patriot's feelings in 1707.

Ye Jacobites by Name might almost be the second half of an eclogue of which Such a Parcel of Rogues is the first part, because it ironically negates any political action that might have been deduced from the latter poem. It is another character-song, apparently sung by a Whig, on the subject of political moralising that is, on the elaboration of ideas to justify material gains already won by force.

This verse is explained in his letter to Mrs Dunlop ( see below ) where Burns says that right and wrong means proper and improper. The short sword and the weak arm is symbolic of cowards doing things by stealth, the long sword and the strong arm is doing things by force.

In the next stanza, heroic strife against the existing Establishment is simply another name for murder and parricide, since civil war can never be regarded as a good. It follows, therefore, that historical necessity forces us to be unheroic. It is nothing less than duty to betray our prince and the heroes who revolt against the Hanoverians.

On the purely Jacobite level, this is a song about the bitterness of defeat in a complicated political situation. It is characterised by that historical understanding which was so marked a feature of Burns genius, the knowledge that in eighteenth-century Scotland the heroic no longer paid off.

That Burns was a true Scot is unquestioned. He always had Scotland at his heart and was prepared to stick his head above the parapet for the cause. His most heartfelt pleas come from The Ode for General Washington's Birthday, and this leaves the Jacobite cause far in the distant past.

The waste of war. Back to the Jacobites by name theme.

He wrote to Mrs Dunlop ( 10th April 1790 ) What are all the boasted advantages which my country reaps from a certain Union, that can counterbalance the annihilation of her independence and even her very name. (At that time Scotland was known as North Britain.) When they talk of Right and Wrong, they only mean Proper and Improper but I call on Honour, Virtue and Worth to give their doctrine a loud negative. Nothing can reconcile me to the common terms. English Ambassador, English Court. I believe in my conscience such ideas as My Country, her independence, her honour.

As to the Union of Parliaments, there was no turning back, and there are letters in which Burns states that the document concerning the British constitution contains glorious principles but that he is alarmed at the corruption between the executive power and the House of Commons which has caused a great deviation from these original principles. He was still, therefore, fighting for the best for Scotland under the union. This I believe is the true Burns. A man of honour who would not have sold Scotland for gold, who was prepared to accept the Union if the powers had stuck to the principles contained within, but who despised the corruption and the people who strayed from these principles of the constitution for their own benefits. This was why he produced the songs of Scotland for no money. This was Burns major patriotic task in life. He knew that a Nation without song had no soul. He knew that a Nation without song would lose its identity and for that we should be thankful. He has kept alive the idea that there is such a thing as a Scottish Nation. He should rank alongside our great Patriot and his own hero William Wallace. Proof again that the pen is mightier than the sword.

Burns Importance to Scotland and to Scots the World Over

Burns and 18th Century Oppression

Burns and the Scottish Dialect.

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