Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/138



"estimation Early authorities shows no such persons as Banquo and his son Fleance. Neither were Banquo or his son ancestors of the house of Stewart.'"

Scott has in another of his works some instructive remarks on the effect of times which may be said to have something of a revolutionary character. In the "Monastery," Murray (the Regent) says:—

"In times like these we must look to men and not to pedigrees. Times of action makes princes into peasants and boors into barons. All families have sprung from one mean man; and it is well if they have never degenerated from his virtue who raised them first from obscurity."

"My Lord of Murray will please to except the house of Douglas," said Morton haughtily; "men have seen it in the tree, but never in the sapling—have seen it in the stream, but never in the fountain. In the earliest of our Scottish annals, the Black Douglas was powerful and distinguished as now."

"I bend to the honour of the house of Douglas," said Murray somewhat ironically; "I am conscious -we of the Royal House have little right to compete with them ia dignity. What though we have worn crowns and carried sceptres for a few generations, if our genealogy moves no farther back than to the humble Alanus Bapifer!"