Scotland had recently lost one man who, had he lived till 1802, might have been called on to act this part. Six or eight years before, when it was most dangerous to be a Scottish Whig,—when to be too zealous a Scottish Whig, unless one were powerfully connected, meant to run a risk of trial for sedition,—there had not been a more daring Whig in Scotland than the poet Burns. True, he was a Whig, as he was everything else, after an uncovenanted fashion of his own, which did not keep touch with any of the current definitions of Whiggism; but, for all that, he was, and he called himself, a Scottish Whig. “Go on, sir,” he wrote from Dumfries, in the end of 1792, to the Whig, or rather Whig-Radical, editor of the shortlived _Edinburgh Gazetteer_, to which he had become a subscriber: “Go on, and lay bare, with undaunted heart and steady hand, that horrid mass of corruption called politics and statecraft. Dare to draw in their native colours those ‘calm-thinking villains whom no faith can fire,’ whatever be the shibboleth of their pretended party.” This was Whiggism and a vast deal more; but the following song, written at the same time, or not long after, shows that, all in all, as matters then stood, it pleased Burns to be known as a Whig of the Fox school:— “Here’s a health to them that’s awa, Here’s a health to them that’s awa; And wha winna wish guid luck to our cause, May never guid luck be their fa’! It’s guid to be merry and wise, It’s guid to be honest and true, It’s guid to support Caledonia’s cause And bide by the buff and the blue. Here’s a health to them that’s awa, Here’s a health to them that’s awa; Here’s a health to Charlie, the chief o’ the clan, Although that his band be sma’! May liberty meet wi’ success! May prudence protect her frae evil! May tyrants and tyranny tine in the mist, And wander their way to the Devil!”