For centuries Scotland had kept close and political links to Europe and continued.
Frances Hutcheson, David Hume and Adam Fergusson were part of the community of European scholars – connected to Diderot, Goethe, Montesquieu and Voltaire. In Scotland the most literate nation in Europe in 1750.
Voltaire said, “We look to Scotland” – does Scotland still have this clout?
Voices against slavery. Scotland owned a third of Jamaica in the 18th century.
The Advocates
Library – production of genius and learning, enabled her sons to make
distinguished figures.
Adam Smith supported the fight for independence
in American colonies and saw slavery as uneconomic and immoral. He questioned
the meaning of freedom in society.
David Hume saw slavery as ‘cruel and
oppressive.’ The dominant statue on the Royal mile is of David Hume (1711 –
1766) Philosopher and historian; Scot and European. Man of the Enlightenment.
He rented his home James Court to James Boswell, critic, writer and biographer
of Samuel Johnson.
Hugh Blair (St Giles 1758 – 1777) supported
Burns and the Ossian poems. Burns’s The Slaves Lament.
William Robertson preached against and sent his
sermons to William Wilberforce 1788.
William Creech – Bookseller, Publisher, councillor
and secretary of chamber of commerce.
He petitioned
Parliament to ban slavery.
Henry Raeburn’s painting of his friend the Reverend Robert Walker skating on a hard winter’s day more than two
centuries ago is one of a select number of paintings, like Leonardo’s Mona
Lisa or Munch’s The
Scream, which is immediately recognisable.
