THE SCOT ABROAD.

Otago Witness, Issue 3015, 27 December 1911, Page 58

THE SCOT ABROAD.

FOUNDING A NATION.

The Hon. Wfcitelaw Reid, the United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom, opened the session of the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution with an address on "The Scot and Ulster Scot in America." The proceedings took place in the Synod Hall, which was crowded to its utmost capacity. Lord Rosebery occupied the chair, and he was supported by a large and representative company. SCOTTISH PIONEERS. Mr Whitelaw Reid, who was warmly welcomed, said he thought their interest might be best enlisted in some account of what had been done by pioneers of their own Scottish blood, when given the larger opportunity of the new world. The Scottish. immigration began in the second half of the seventeenth century. The first notable Scottish arrivals were those shipped on the boat John and Sara in-1652. They were prisoners of war captured by Cromwell after the Battle of Dunbar, and sentenced to be transported to the American plantationo and sold into service. - Similar shipments of prisoners of war and then cargoes of convicted criminals followed. And yet so rapidly did eager followers tread the steps of the involuntary immigrants that only a third of a century after the first shipload of Scottish prisoners to be sold into service was landed at Boston, -a Scottish missionary, the Rev. James Blair, of Edinburgh, was founding one of the oldest of American college*—"William and Mary," in Virginia. Many inhabitant* of North-Western Scotland, especially the clans of Macdonald and Macleod, were induced to emigrate, and their reports drew after them whole neighbourhoods from the isles of Raasay and Skye. In 1736 an emigrant company of Highlanders started New Inverness in Darien, Georgia. In 1738 an Argyllshire man, Captain Laughlin Campbell, took 83 families from his own neighbourhood to be established in a grant of 47,000 acres which he had obtained on the borders >f Lake George, New York. Scottish Presbyterians were largely settlers in Putnam County and Duchess County, New York. Members of disbanded Highland regiments got grants of land in the Carolinas and Virginia. SOME FAMOUS NAMES. Robert Livingstone, a Scot fromAncrum, became the founder of an important Revolutionary family, some of the members of which attained to high office. Another portentous Scot, born in Kirkcudbright in 1747, and who went to Virginia when 13 years old, was Paul Jones, who held the first captain's commission of the American navy, and became admiral. There would be no difference of opinion as to the services of another great Scotsman, born at Yester. East Lothian—-viz., John Witherspoori, wno became President of Princeton University, and brought it to a place among the foremost educational institutions of the land. A.son of Ralph Erskine, the Presbyterian seceder, became chief of engineers on the staff of George Washington. When the States gained their independence, and it came to the framing of a constitution for the new nation, out of 54 members of the Convention 12 were of Scottish descent. Of the college-bred men in the Convention, one-half were of Scottish descent. One of them stood easily at the head, and for pure intellectual eminence and the genius of statesmanship outranked, then and till his premature death, any other living American. This was that marvellous West Indian boy, half Scottish, half Huguenot French, Alexander Hamilton—(applause) —whose brilliant career the Ambassador went on to sketch. James Wilson, a Scotsman born at St. Andrews, also deserved to be remembered in connection with the framing of the constitution. STATESMEN AND SOLDIERS. Washington's first Cabinet contained four members. Two of them were Scots and a third was an Ulster Scot. Among the first Governors for the new State Governments set up by the colonies, nine (two-thirds) were of either Scottish or Ulster Scottish origin. The same tendency was marked thoroughout the list of men who had filled the great office of President of the United States. Eleven out of the whole 25, nearly one-half, were of Scottish or Ulster Scottish origin. James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, U. S. Grant, R. B. Haynes, Chester; A." Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, William MacKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt, who, though Dutch on his father's side, was on his mother's a descendant of Alexander Bulloch, the first Scottish Governor of Georgia.—(Applause.) In all the historic achievements of Scotland, was there any more remarkable than this conquest of leadership in a new land by men half a century behind other and strong races in entering upon the scene?—(Applause.) If they thought ill of this work and of the record of the Republic, then he had at least dealt faithfully with them after the manner of their pulpit, ana "set your transgressions in order before you."— (Laughter and applause.) If, on the other hand, as he ventured to hope, they thought well of their work, then he was there to acknowledge with gratitude their large indebtedness to the Scottish race and blood for its inspiration and its success. They had not forgotten their origin or their obligations. In all parts of the continental Republic hearts still turned fondly to the old land, thrilling with pride in their past and hope for their future, and joining with them, as they had good reason to join, in the old cry, "Scotland for ever!"—(Loud and prolonged applause.)