Burns poetry and Song have become a symbolic touchstone of Scottish identity for generations, The Patriot Bard, by Patrick Scott Hogg
In the age of enlightenment Burns believed in the power of reason and common sense. When there was a crackdown on democratic reform. The Jacobite cause was symbolic of the country’s lost, romantic past.
The tyrannical oppression of the Pitt government brought the enlightenment movement to its knees and silenced the leading minds of a generation. Burns risked his life and freedom to continue composing such radical material of social satire during his last few years. He published anonymously Scots Wa Hae as he considered it too seditious.
William Pitt (1759 –1806) was a British statesman who served as the last prime minister of Great Britain from 1783 until the Acts of Union 1800, and the first official Prime minister of the UK from January 1801.
He left office in March 1801, but served as prime minister again from 1804 until his death in 1806. He is known as "Pitt the Younger" to distinguish him from his father, William Pitt the Elder, who had also previously served as prime minister from 1766–1768.
Pitt's premierships, during the reign of King George III were dominated by major political events in Europe, including the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. Pitt, is often referred to by historians as a Tory or "new Tory", and called himself an "independent Whig and was generally opposed to the development of a strict partisan political system. Pitt was regarded as a good administrator who worked for efficiency. He increased taxes to pay for the great war against France and cracked down on radicalism. To counter the threat of Irish support for France, he engineered the Acts of Union 1800.
