Page:Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919).djvu/264

252 classes. In England after the Norman Conquest our peasants talked English, but our knights French, and our priests Latin, with the result that a knight felt himself more at home with a knight from France than with his own people, and so was it also with the priests. To-day there is a curious difference, it seems to me, in this respect, between the Scottish and English peoples. In England the upper professional classes go to the same schools and universities as the landed classes, and the merchants and captains of industry also send their sons to those schools. Therefore the line of social cleavage, as shown by speech and bearing, is between the upper and the lower middle classes. In Scotland, on the other hand, the people of the highest tier of society send their sons for the most part to the English Public Schools and the English Universities, whereas the ministers of the Scottish Churches, the advocates in the Scottish Law Courts, and the doctors and schoolmasters are trained in the main in the local Universities, which are frequented by the sons of the shopkeepers and artisans to a greater extent than in England. The result, as I believe, is that the Scottish aristocracy has been, to a greater degree than in England, detached from the people. I do not blame them, for