Burns the Democrat.
No man ever comprehended Christ’s ideals regarding democracy more fully than did Burns. Christ based His teaching of the need of human liberty on His revelation of the value of the individual soul. Burns clearly understood Christ’s ideals regarding individual freedom, and faithfully followed Him.
The message of Coila in ‘The Vision’ to Burns was:
Preserve the dignity of man
With soul erect.
This was the central thought in the work of Burns regarding the freedom of all mankind: freedom from oppression by other men; freedom from the bondage imposed on the peasant and the labouring man by customs organised by so-called ‘higher classes’; freedom from the hardship and sorrow of poverty; freedom for each child to grow under proper conditions of nourishment, of physical development, and of educational training.
His whole nature was stirred to dignified indignation and resentment by class distinctions among men and women who were all created in the image of God, and who, in accordance with the teaching of Christ, should be brothers. He despised class distinctions which were made by man, whether the distinctions were made on the basis of rank or wealth. He was ashamed of the toadies who reverenced a lord merely because he chanced to be born a lord, and pitied those who accepted without protest inferiority to men of wealth. He was so true a democrat that he freely and respectfully recognised the worth of members of the aristocracy or of the wealthy class whose ability and high character made them worthy of respect; but he held in contempt those who assumed superiority simply because of rank or gold.
One of his most brilliant poems is ‘A Man’s a Man for a’ That.’ In it he gives comprehensive expression to his opinions, based on the fundamental principle,
The honest man, though e’er sae poor,
Is King o’ men for a’ that.
Is there for honesty poverty,
That hangs his head an’ a’ that?
The coward-slave, we pass him by;
We dare be poor for a’ that.
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
Our toils obscure, an’ a’ that;
The rank is but the guinea stamp,
The man’s the gowd for a’ that. gold
Ye see yon birkie, ca’d a lord,
Wha struts, and stares, an’ a’ that;
Tho’ hundreds worship at his word,
He’s but a coof for a’ that: blockhead
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
His ribband, star, an’ a’ that;
The man of independent mind
He looks and laughs at a’ that.
A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an’ a’ that;
But an honest man’s aboon his might, above
Gude faith he maunna fa’ that. must not try
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
Their dignities an’ a’ that,
The pith o’ sense, an’ pride o’ worth,
Are higher ranks than a’ that.
Labouring man on farm or in factory, this is your charter. Let this be your creed. Sing this great democratic hymn at your gatherings—ay, sing it in your homes with your children, and each time you sing it, it should kindle some new light in your soul that will bring you new vision of the greatest fact in connection with human life and duty, that you are alive to be God’s partner, and that while you remain honest, and unselfishly consider the rights of others, as fully as you consider your own, you are entitled to stand with kings, because you are an honest man.
The discussion between Cæsar the aristocratic dog and Luath the cotter’s dog is a fair representation of class conditions in Scotland in the time of Burns. Cæsar describes the laird’s riches, his idleness, his rackèd rents, and the compulsory services required from the poor tenants; dilates on the wastefulness in connection with the meals even of the servants in the homes of the great; and expresses surprise that poor folks could exist under their trying conditions.
Luath admits that sometimes the strain on the cotter was very severe: digging ditches, building dykes with dirty stones, baring a quarry, ‘an’ sic like,’ as a means of sustaining a lot of ragged children with nothing but his hand labour. He acknowledges that, when ill or out of work, it sometimes seems hopeless; but, after all, though past his comprehension, the poor folks are wonderfully contented, and stately men and clever women are brought up in their homes.
Cæsar then expatiates on the contemptuous way the poor are ‘huffed, and cuffed, and disrespecket.’ He especially sympathises with the poor on account of the way tenants are treated by the laird’s agents on rent-day—compelled to submit to their insolence, while they swear and threaten to seize their property; and concludes that poor folks must be very wretched.
Luath replies that, after all, they are not so wretched as he thinks; that their dearest enjoyments are in their wives and thriving children; that they often forget their private cares and discuss the affairs of kirk and state; that Hallowe’en and Christmas celebrations give them grand opportunities for happiness that make them forget their hardships and sorrows, and that during these festivals the old folks are so cheery and the young ones are so frolicsome that he ‘for joy has barket wi’ them!’ Still, he admits that it is owre true what Cæsar says, and that many decent, honest folk ‘are riven out, baith root and branch, some rascal’s pridefu’ greed to quench.’
Cæsar then describes the reckless way in which the money received from the poor cotters was wasted at operas, plays, mortgaging, gambling, masquerading, or taking trips to Calais, Vienna, Versailles, Madrid, or Italy; and finally to Germany, to some resort where their dissipations may be overcome by drinking muddy German water.
Luath is surprised to learn that the money for which the cotters have toiled so hard should be spent so wastefully; and wishes the gentry would stay at home and take interest in the sports of their own country, as it would be so much better for all: laird, tenant, and cotter. He closes by saying that many of the lairds are not ill-hearted fellows, and asks Cæsar if there is not a great deal of true pleasure in the lives of the rich.
Cæsar replies:
Lord, man, were ye but whyles where I am,
The gentles ye wad ne’er envy them.
Admitting that they need not starve or work hard through winter’s cold or summer’s heat, or suffer in old age from working all day in the wet, he says:
But human bodies are sic fools,
For a’ their colleges and schools,
That when nae real ills perplex them,
They mak enow themsels to vex them;
An’ aye the less they hae to sturt them,
In like proportion less will hurt them.
A country fellow at the pleugh,
His acres till’d, he’s right eneugh;
A country girl at her wheel,
Her dizzens dune, she’s unco weel;
But gentlemen, and ladies warst,
Wi’ ev’n-down want o’ wark are curst.
They loiter, lounging, lank and lazy;
Tho’ deil-haet ails them, yet uneasy;
Their days insipid, dull, an’ tasteless;
Their nights unquiet, lang, and restless.
An’ even their sports, their balls and races,
Their galloping through public places,
There’s sic parade, sic pomp an’ art,
The joy can scarcely reach the heart.
The ladies arm-in-arm in clusters,
As great and gracious a’ as sisters;
But hear their absent thoughts o’ ither,
They’re a’ run deils and jads thegither.
Whyles, ower the wee bit cup an’ plaitie,
They sip the scandal-potion pretty;
Or lee-lang nights, wi’ crabbet leuks,
Pore ower the devil’s pictured beuks; cards
Stake on a chance a farmer’s stackyard,
An’ cheat like ony unhanged blackguard.
There’s some exceptions, man an’ woman;
But this is gentry’s life in common.
Burns was a philosopher, and he knew such conditions were wrong, and that they should not be allowed to last. They are better, after more than a century, since Burns became the champion of the poor; but the great problem, ‘Why should ae man better fare, and a’ men brothers?’ is not properly answered yet. The wisest among the aristocracy know this, and admit it, and sincerely hope that the inevitable evolution to juster conditions and relationships may be brought about by constitutional means, and not by revolution.
Professor Dugald Stewart, of Edinburgh University, wrote: ‘I recollect once he told me, when I was admiring a distant prospect in one of our morning walks, that the sight of so many smoking cottages gave a pleasure to his mind none could understand who had not witnessed, like himself, the happiness and the worth which they contained.’
It was not the unhappiness of the peasantry that stirred the democratic heart of Burns. It was ‘man’s inhumanity’ to his fellow-men; the assumption of those belonging to the so-called upper classes that they had a divine right to hold higher positions than the common people, and that the poorer people should be contented in the ‘station to which God had called them,’ that led Burns to write so ably in favour of democracy. He recognised no human right to establish stations to which people were called, and in which they should remain, in spite of their right to fill any positions for which they had proved their fitness. He could not be so irreverent or so unreasonable as to believe God could establish the conditions found all around him, so he claimed the right of every child to full opportunity for its best development, and to rise honourably to any position to which it could attain.
In a letter to Miss Margaret Chalmers, 1788, he wrote: ‘What signify the silly, idle gewgaws of wealth, or the idle trumpery of greatness? When fellow-partakers of the same nature fear the same God, have the same benevolence of heart, the same nobleness of soul, the same detestation of everything dishonest, and the same scorn at everything unworthy—in the name of common-sense, are they not equals?’
To Mrs Dunlop he wrote in 1788: ‘There are few circumstances, relating to the unequal distribution of good things of this life, that give me more vexation (I mean in what I see around me) than the importance the opulent bestow on their trifling family affairs, compared with the very same things on the contracted scale of the cottage. Last afternoon I had the honour to spend an hour or two at a good woman’s fireside, where the planks that composed the floor were decorated with a splendid carpet, and the gay table sparkled with silver and china. ’Tis now about term-day Such experiences added fuel to the divine purpose in his mind to free a large portion of his fellow-countrymen from the bonds that had been bound on their bodies and souls by long years of class presumption and heartless tyranny, which, till Burns attacked them, had grown more unjust and contemptuous as generation succeeded generation. Burns’s reverence for real manhood, a basic principle of true democratic spirit, is shown in the closing verse of his ‘Elegy on Captain Matthew Henderson’: Go to your sculptured tombs, ye Great, To John Francis Erskine he wrote, 1793: ‘Burns was a poor man from birth and an exciseman from necessity; but—I will say it—the sterling of his honest worth no poverty could debase, and his independent British mind oppression might bend, but could not subdue.... Can I look tamely on and see any machination to wrest from them the birthright of my boys—the little, independent Britons, in whose veins runs my own blood?... Does any man tell me that my full efforts can be of no service, and that it does not belong to my humble station to meddle with the concerns of a nation? I can tell him that it is on such individuals as I that a nation has to rest, both for the hand of support and the eye of intelligence. The uninformed Mob may swell a Nation’s bulk, and the titled, tinsel, courtly throng may be its feathered ornament; but the number of those who are elevated enough in life to reason and reflect, yet low enough to keep clear of the venal contagion of a court—these are a nation’s strength.’ He wrote the letter, from which this is an extract, because some super-loyalists were trying to undermine his reputation on account of his independence of spirit and his democratic principles, with a view to having him removed from the paltry position he held as an Excise officer. He was proudly, sensitively independent. He inherited his temperamental characteristics from his mother. He was happier defending others than working for himself. Writing to the Earl of Eglintoun, he said: ‘Mercenary servility, I trust, I shall ever have as much honest pride as to detest.’ Writing to Mr Francis Grose, F.S.A., in 1790, about Professor Dugald Stewart, he said: ‘Mr Stewart’s principal characteristic is your favourite feature—that sterling independence of mind which, though every man’s right, so few men have the courage to claim, and fewer still the magnanimity to support.’ In 1795, the year before his death, he wrote three poems favourable to the election of Mr Heron, the Whig candidate. In the first poem he said: The independent commoner Mrs Riddell, writing of Burns after his death, said: ‘His features were stamped with the hardy character of independence.’ He was a democrat whose democracy was based on the rock of independence and a character that ‘preserved the dignity of man with soul erect.’ Burns saw both sides of the ideal of freedom. He hated tyrants, and he despised those who tamely submitted to tyranny. The inscription on the Altar to Independence, erected by Mr Heron at Kerroughtree, written by Burns, reads: Thou of an independent mind, The man of whom Burns approved was ‘one who wilt not be nor have a slave.’ In ‘Lines Inscribed in a Lady’s Pocket Almanac’ he says: Deal Freedom’s sacred treasures free as air, In the ‘Lines on the Commemoration of Rodney’s Victory’ he wrote: Be Anarchy cursed, and be Tyranny damned; condemned Burns was a philosopher whose mind had been trained to look at both sides of a question, and estimate truly their relationships to each other. Even in one of his beautiful poems to his wife, written after he was married, ‘I Hae a Wife o’ My Ain,’ he wrote: I am naebody’s lord, While Burns was an intense lover of freedom, he had no sympathy with those who would overturn constituted authority. He wished to achieve the freedom of the people, but to achieve it by constitutional means. He was a national volunteer in Dumfries, and he composed a fine patriotic song for the corps to sing. He revealed his balanced mind in the following lines in that song: The wretch that would a tyrant own, Burns had as little respect for a king who was a tyrant, as he had for a tyrant in any other situation in life; but he clearly saw the wicked folly of allowing mob-rule to be substituted for constitutional authority. In the Prologue written to be spoken by an actor on his benefit night, Burns wrote: No hundred-headed Riot here we meet Here, again, he records the dominant ideal of his mind through life; but at the same time he utters a warning against ignorant and wild theorists, who, in their madness, would overthrow civilisation. He overflows again on his favourite theme in the ‘Lines on the Commemoration of Rodney’s Victory,’ when he was proposing toasts: The next in succession I’ll give you’s the King! The love of liberty grew stronger in his heart and in his mind as he grew older. In his songs, and in his letters, he frequently moralised on independence of character and the value of liberty. In a letter to the Morning Chronicle he said, 1795: ‘I am a Briton, and must be interested in the cause of liberty.’ To Patrick Miller he sent a copy of his poems in 1793, accompanied by a letter expressing gratitude for his kindness and appreciation of him ‘as a patriot who in a venal, sliding age stands forth the champion of the liberties of my country.’ In his love-song, ‘Their Groves o’ Sweet Myrtle,’ he compares the boasted glories of tropical lands with the beauty of his beloved Scotland, and boasts in pride of the charms of the Lone glen o’ green breckan, ferns and of the sweetness of Yon humble broom bowers, He cannot close the song, however, without claiming that beautiful as are the ‘sweet-scented woodlands’ of these foreign countries, they are, after all, ‘the haunt of the tyrant and slave,’ and that The slave’s spicy forests, and gold-bubbling fountains, Burns celebrated the success of the French Revolution in a poem entitled ‘The Tree of Liberty.’ His heart bled for the peasantry of France, whom the aristocrats had treated so contemptuously, and with such lack of consideration, and cruelty. He rejoiced in the overthrow of their oppressors, and the establishment of a republican form of government. In this poem he gives credit to Lafayette, the great Frenchman who had gone to assist the people of the United States in their brave struggle to get free. He asks blessings on the head of the noble man, Lafayette, in the verse: My blessings aye attend the chiel The greatest poem Burns wrote to rejoice at the victorious progress of humanity towards freedom was his ‘Ode to Liberty,’ written to express his supreme gratification at the success of the people of the United States in their struggle for independence from England. He wrote it, as he wrote most of his poems during his life in Dumfries, in the moonlight in Lincluden Abbey ruins, on the Nith River, just outside of Dumfries. He introduces the ode in a poem named ‘A Vision.’ He tells that, at midnight, while in the ruins, he saw in the roofless tower of the abbey, a vision: By heedless chance I turned my eyes, The ghost tells the story of the tyranny England exercised over the people of the United States, and of the breaking of the tyrant’s chains. Burns had no more respect for despotism by an English king than he had for the despotism of a tyrant in any other land. He knew the people of the American colonies were right. England’s greatest statesman, Pitt, had said so, when the colonists, driven to desperation, rebelled; so the ghost’s revelation should be to a liberty-loving Briton’s ear ‘a tale of woe.’ The ode begins: No Spartan tube, no Attic shell, So the poem proceeds, till he appeals to King Alfred, and finally to Caledonia: Alfred! on thy starry throne, He loved to stir the liberty-loving spirit of his beloved Caledonia, so to her sons he makes the final appeal in his great ode. He wrote in a similar strain in the Prologue written for his friend Woods, the actor: O Thou dread Power! whose empire-giving hand He reached the highest degree of patriotic fervour, and his clearest call, not only to Scotsmen, but to all true men, to be ready to do their duty for justice and liberty, in ‘Bruce’s Address at Bannockburn.’ In a letter to the Earl of Buchan, 1794, enclosing a copy of this poem, he wrote: ‘Independent of my enthusiasm as a Scotsman, I have rarely met with anything in history which interests my feelings as a man equal with the story of Bannockburn. On the one hand a cruel, but able, usurper, leading on the finest army in Europe, to extinguish the last spark of freedom among a greatly daring and greatly injured people; on the other hand, the desperate relics of a gallant nation, devoting themselves to rescue their bleeding country or perish with her. Liberty! thou art a prize truly and indeed invaluable, for never canst thou be too dearly bought.’ Scots, wha hae wi’ Wallace bled, ‘So may God ever defend the cause of Truth and Liberty as he did that day. ‘Robert Burns.’ Because he was so outspoken in regard to democracy, some men assumed he was not a loyal man. The truth is, that he always loved his country, but he ardently desired to improve the conditions of the great body of his countrymen. Complaints were made about his disloyalty to the Excise commissioners under whom he worked. These complaints were investigated, and Burns was found to be a loyal man. When the call came from the Government for volunteers, Burns joined the Dumfries Volunteers. In his great song composed for these volunteers he strongly expresses his loyalty, both to his country and to his king, in the following quotations: We’ll ne’er permit a foreign foe To Robert Graham of Fintry, 1792, he wrote: ‘To the British Constitution on revolution principles, next after my God, I am most devoutly attached.’ Again, a month later, he wrote to Mr Graham: ‘I never uttered any invectives against the King. His private worth it is altogether impossible that such a man as I can appreciate; but in his public capacity I always revered, and always will, with the soundest loyalty, revere the Monarch of Great Britain as (to speak in Masonic) the sacred Keystone of our Royal Arch Constitution. As to reform principles, I look upon the British Constitution, as settled at the Revolution, to be the most glorious Constitution on earth, or that perhaps the wit of man can frame. ········ ‘I never dictated to, corresponded with, or had the least connection with, any political association whatever—except that when the magistrates and principal inhabitants of Dumfries met to declare their attachment to the Constitution, and their abhorrence of riot.’ He had strong desires to effect many reforms in public life, but he was an intelligent believer in the British Constitution, and had no faith in any method of achieving reforms in the Empire except by constitutional measures. He was a radical reformer with a grand mental balance-wheel; and such reformers make the best type of citizens, ardent reformers with cool heads and unselfish hearts. Carlyle strangely misunderstood the spirit of democracy in Burns, although he justly wrote, long after the poet’s death: ‘He appears not only as a true British poet, but as one of the most considerable British men of the eighteenth century.’ What were the achievements, in addition to his poetic power, that made Burns ‘one of the most considerable men of the eighteenth century?’ Mainly the work he did to develop in the souls of men a consciousness of fundamental principles of democracy, and higher ideals of vital religion; yet Carlyle does not approve of his efforts to reform either social or religious conditions. As the centuries pass, the work of Burns for Religion, Democracy, and Brotherhood will be recognised as his greatest work for humanity. Carlyle’s belief was that Burns wrote about the wrongs of the oppressed because he could not become rich. In that belief he was clearly in error. The love of freedom, justice, and independence was a basic passion in the character of Burns. The anxiety of Burns regarding money was not for himself, but for his family in case he should die. Several times he referred to this in letters to his most intimate friends.
In a’ the tinsel trash o’ state!
But by thy honest turf I’ll wait,
Thou man of worth!
And weep the ae best fellow’s fate
E’er lay in earth.
Shall be the man for a’ that.
With soul resolv’d, with soul resign’d;
Prepar’d Power’s proudest frown to brave,
Who wilt not be, nor have a slave;
Virtue alone who dost revere,
Thy own reproach alone dost fear—
Approach this shrine, and worship here.
Till Slave and Despot be but things that were.
And who would to Liberty e’er be disloyal
May his son be a hangman—and he his first trial.
I’ll be slave to naebody.
And the wretch, his true-born brother,
Who would set the mob aboon the throne, above
May they be damned together.
With decency and law beneath his feet;
Nor Insolence assumes fair Freedom’s name.
Whoe’er would betray him, on high may he swing!
And here’s the grand fabric, the free Constitution,
As built on the base of our great Revolution.
Wi’ the burn stealing under the lang yellow broom,
Where the blue-bell and gowan lurk, lowly, unseen.
The brave Caledonian views wi’ disdain;
He wanders as free as the winds of his mountains.
Wha pitied Gallia’s slaves, man,
And staw a branch, spite o’ the deil, stole
Frae yont the western waves, man.
Fair Virtue watered it wi’ care,
And now she sees wi’ pride, man,
How weel it buds and blossoms there,
Its branches spreading wide, man.
······
A wicked crew syne, on a time,
Did tak a solemn aith, man, oath
It ne’er should flourish to its prime,
I wat they pledged their faith, man.
Awa they gaed, wi’ mock parade,
Like beagles hunting game, man,
But soon grew weary o’ the trade,
And wished they’d stayed at hame, man.
Fair Freedom, standing by the tree,
Her sons did loudly ca’, man;
She sang a song o’ liberty, Marseillaise
Which pleased them ane and a’, man.
By her inspired, the new-born race
Soon drew the avenging steel, man;
The hirelings ran—her friends gied chase
And banged the despot weel, man.
······
Wi’ plenty o’ sic trees, I trow,
The warld would live at peace, man;
The sword would help to mak’ a plough;
The din o’ war wad cease, man.
And, by the moonbeam, shook to see
A stern and stalwart ghaist arise, ghost
Attired as minstrels wont to be.
Had I a statue been o’ stane,
His daring look had daunted me;
And on his bonnet graved was plain,
The sacred posy, ‘Libertie.’
And frae his harp sic strains did flow
Might rouse the slumbering dead to hear;
But oh! it was a tale of woe,
As ever met a Briton’s ear!
No lyre Æolian I awake;
’Tis liberty’s bold note I swell;
Thy harp, Columbia, let me take!
See gathering thousands, while I sing,
A broken chain exultant bring,
And dash it in the tyrant’s face,
And dare him to his very beard,
And tell him he no more is feared—
No more the despot of Columbia’s race!
A tyrant’s proudest insults braved,
They shout—a People freed! They hail an Empire saved.
······
But come, ye sons of Liberty,
Columbia’s offspring, brave and free.
In danger’s hour still flaming in the van,
Ye know and dare maintain ‘the Royalty of Man.’
Surrounded by the tuneful choir,
The bards that erst have struck the patriotic lyre,
And rous’d the freeborn Briton’s soul of fire,
No more thy England own!
Dare injured nations form the great design,
To make detested tyrants bleed?
Thy England execrates the glorious deed!
Beneath her hostile banners waving,
Every pang of honour braving,
England, in thunder calls, ‘The tyrant’s cause is mine!’
That hour accurst how did the fiends rejoice,
And hell, through all her confines, raise the exulting voice!
That hour which saw the generous English name
Linkt with such damned deeds of everlasting shame!
Thee, Caledonia! thy wild heaths among,
Fam’d for the martial deed, the heaven-taught song,
To thee I turn with swimming eyes;
Where is that soul of Freedom fled?
Immingled with the mighty dead,
Beneath that hallow’d turf where Wallace lies!
Hear it not, Wallace! in thy bed of death.
Ye babbling winds! in silence sweep,
Disturb not ye the hero’s sleep,
Nor give the coward secret breath.
Is this the ancient Caledonian form,
Firm as the rock, resistless as the storm?
Has oft been stretched to shield the honoured land!
Strong may she glow with all her ancient fire!
May every son be worthy of his sire!
Firm may she rise with generous disdain
At Tyranny’s, or direr Pleasure’s, chain;
Still self-dependent in her native shore,
Bold may she brave grim Danger’s loudest roar,
Till fate the curtain drop on worlds to be no more.
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led,
Welcome to your gory bed,
Or to Victorie!
Now’s the day and now’s the hour;
See the front o’ battle lour!
See approach proud Edward’s power—
Chains and slaverie!
Wha will be a traitor knave?
Wha can fill a coward’s grave?
Wha sae base as be a slave?
Let him turn and flee!
Wha for Scotland’s King and Law,
Freedom’s sword will strongly draw,
Free-Man stand, or Free-Man fa’?
Let him follow me!
By Oppression’s woes and pains!
By your Sons in servile chains!
We will drain our dearest veins,
But they shall be free!
Lay the proud Usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!
Liberty’s in every blow!
Let us Do—or Die.
On British ground to rally.
Be Britain still to Britain true,
Amang oursels united;
For never but by British hands
Maun British wrangs be righted. must
Who will not sing ‘God save the King,’
Shall hang as high’s the steeple!
But while we sing ‘God save the King,’
We’ll ne’er forget the people.CHAPTER VI.