Men like Boswell and Sinclair would have answered without hesitation that it was. The Union had admitted Scotland to as much share as she could grasp of the wealth of the British Empire; commerce and industry were increasing year by year; the poor relation was beginning to live like the prosperous branch of the family. For such profits, the change of name from ‘Scotland’ to ‘North Britain’ seemed a small price. To those who shared in the new prosperity, the suggestion of a nationalist movement would have seemed rank folly or even downright treason. So long as the prosperity continued, indeed, the ‘practical men’ had the overwhelming majority of their countrymen with them. The emergence of Scottish nationalism as a political force to be reckoned with had to await the collapse of Scottish industry which followed the World War. With the loss of material prosperity, the Scots have begun to question the value of the system which transfers to Westminster the control of their local affairs. Scottish poverty and Scottish pride are seemingly interdependent. Removal of the one will make the nation more willing to swallow the other. Even if Burns had shared the material prosperity resulting from the Union, instead of helping, as tenant of rack-rented land, to pay for it, his feelings would have been the same. In every fibre of his being he shared the spirit of those Scots who, in contradiction of every proverbial association of pawky caution with their race, have been among the greatest soldiers, explorers, and idealists of modern history. Montrose and Livingstone, Admiral Duncan and Mungo Park, expressed in action the national traits which he expressed in song. His calling, consciously accepted, was that of national poet; his other activities merely the ‘sweat, that the base machine might have its oil’. He refused payment for his songs, because the task of supplying words to national melodies was a patriotic service, embalming and treasuring up these relics of his country’s spirit to a life beyond life.