LIBERTY OF SCOTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 142, 17 June 1937, Page 7

LIBERTY OF SCOTS

The Rev. J. H. Mackenzie gave a talk on "Scotland's Fight for Civil and Religious Liberty" at the last meeting of the Wellington Burns Club. He found his text in Burns's "For Civil Freedom":— Scots wha liae \vi' Wallace bled, Scots wham Bruce has aften led, etc. The speaker asked, Who was Wallace? and gave a sketch of his heroic life and shameful execution. The same question was asked in regard to Bruce, who was crowned on the Stone of Scone, in use at the Coronation of George VI, and the lecture gave an account of Bruce's triumph.

For religious liberty a verse from the "Cottar's Saturday Night" was quoted, and special attention called to the "Big Ha Bible," the free use of which was the open way to real freedom, and which was at the back of all the contentions of John Knox and Andrew Melville, the story of whose lives was briefly retold. The speaker'exhibited a piece of the blanket under which Bonnie Prince Charlie slept when he visited Dumfries in the '45, forty years before Burns removed to Dumfries. He maintained that the securing of freedom for Scotland had not only proved a blessing to the Scots, but had been a gift to England, and later to the whole British Empire, as no people could give of their best who were held in thraldom.