Angus Calder > Quotes

“In return for supplying parliamentary votes en bloc to whichever government held sway at Westminster, the "managers" of Scotland - first the Dukes of Argyll, then the Earl of Bute, then, most successfully of all, the canny Lothian lawyer Henry Dundas - controlled patronage in Scotland and governed the country as much as its influential people thought it needed. By this means the old power of the regional magnates adapted to the new politics.”
― Angus Calder, Irish Pages, Vol. 12, No. 2: Scotland

“As Walter Scott showed, one could preserve the most intense passion for Caledonia stern and wild, one's own, one's native land, while rejoicing in the triumphs of the British armed forces over Napoleon and expressing devout loyalty to the Hanovarian dynasty, which, despite the madness of George III and the profligacy of his son and heir, had come to represent for Britons not only the virtues of sturdy monarchy under the sublime Constitution, but, most improbably, family values.”
― Angus Calder, Irish Pages, Vol. 12, No. 2: Scotland