THE SCOTS IN ENGLAND.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19152, 8 November 1927, Page 10

THE SCOTS IN ENGLAND.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE PEKSS. . Sir, —I believe that all those who are loyally disposed to the Empire would admit that friendly rivalry between its different component parts, was helpful and gQOd.for the whole. I have taken that truism to introduce a subject to your readers that I think will interest a great many of them—no matter to which side in politics they incline to lean to. I will ask both the Capitalist and the Bed-Fed to listen to what the Provost (the Scotch word for Mayor) of Edinburgh said when he welcomed the delegates to the last Trade Union Congress, which was held in the capital of Scotland in September, - and which was the fifty-ninth year of their meeting, to consider matters concerning the welfare of the workers. He asked these delegates, who were drawn from all parts of Great Britain, not to think of Scotland -as a small country, but to remember that it had supplied live of the last ten Prime Ministers of England. That to me was a startling statement to make, so I was curious enough to look up who were the'last ten Prime Ministers of England, and I make them out to be as under: —.

English—Gladstone, Salisbury, Asquith, Lloyd George, Baldwin. '' Scotch—Rosebery, Balfour, Campbell, Bannerman, Bonar Law, Mac Donald. If an Englishman had wanted to detract from that claim he might have reminded the Provost that these five Scotchmen had all short tenures of office, and that Asquith held the Premiership longer himself vthan all these five from North of the Tweed put together; then Scotland could have said that .though Gladstone was of Scotch descent, we have let England claim him as hers Yours, etc., SCOTCH.