In respect to Jacobinism, the condition of Scotland is much altered from
what it was; pauperism and great towns have worked "strange defeatures" in
Scottish society. A vast capital has arisen in the west, on a level with
the first-rate capitals of the Continent--with Vienna or with Naples; far
superior in size to Madrid, to Lisbon, to Berlin; more than equal to Rome
and Milan; or again to Munich and Dresden, taken by couples: and in this
point, beyond comparison with any one of these capitals, that whilst
_they_ are connected by slight ties with the circumjacent country, Glasgow
keeps open a communication with the whole land. Vast laboratories of
encouragement to manual skill, too often dissociated from consideration of
character; armies of mechanics, gloomy and restless, having no interfusion
amongst their endless files of any gradations corresponding to a system of
controlling officers; these spectacles, which are permanently offered by
the _castra stativa_ of combined mechanics in Glasgow and its dependencies,
(Paisley, Greenock, &c.,) supported by similar districts, and by turbulent
collieries in other parts of that kingdom, make Scotland, when now
developing her strength, no longer the safe and docile arena for popular
movements which once she was, with a people that were scattered, and
habits that were pastoral. And at this moment, so fearfully increased is
the overbalance of democratic impulses in Scotland, that perhaps in no
European nation--hardly excepting France--has it become more important to
hang weights and retarding forces upon popular movements amongst the
labouring classes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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