Maitland Club > Works of Sir Thomas Urquhart

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else, be it never so recommendable, will they depart from so much as one single peny,
whose emission doth not, without any hazard of loss, in a very short time superlucrate
beyond all conscience an additionall increase to the heap of that stock which they so
much adore ; which churlish and tenacious humor hath made many that were not
acquainted with any else of that country, to imagine all their compatriots infected with
the same leprosie of a wretched peevishness, whereof those quomodocunquizing cluster-
fists and rapacious varlets have given of late such cannibal-like proofs, by their in-
humanity and obdurate carriage towards some, whose shoes-strings they are not wor-
thy to unty, that were it not that a more able pen then mine will assuredly not faile
to jerk them on all sides, in case, by their better demeanor for the future, they endea-
vour not to wipe off the blot wherewith their native country, by their sordid avarice
and miserable baseness, hath been so foully stained, I would at this very instant blaze
them out in their names and surnames, notwithstanding the vizard of Presbyterian
zeal wherewith they maske themselves, that like so many wolves, foxes, or Athenian
Timons, they might in all times coming, be debarred the benefit of any honest con-
versation.
Thus is it perceptible how usual it is, from the irregularity of a few, to conclude
an universal defection, and that the whole is faulty because a part is not right ; there
being in it a fallacy of induction, as if because this, that and the other are both greedy
and dissembling, and therefore all other their country-men are such ; which will no
wayes follow, if any one of these others be free from those vices, for that one particu-
lar negative, by the rules of contradictory opposites, will destroy an universal affirma-
tive ; and of such there are many thousands in that nation, who are neither greedy
nor dissemblers.
And so would all the rest, if a joint and unanimous course were taken to have their
noblemen free from baseness, their church-men from avarice, their merchants from
deceit, their gentlemen from pusillanimity, their lawyers from prevarication, their
tradesmen from idleness, their farmers from lying, their young men from pride, their
old men from morosity, their rich from hard -heartednes, their poor from theeving,
their great ones from faction, their meaner sort from implicit sectatorship, the magis-
trates from injustice, the clients from litigiousness, and all of them from dishonesty
and disrespect of learning ; which, though but negatives of vertue, and at best but
the ullimum non esse of vice, would nevertheless go near to restore the good fame of
that country to its pristine integrity ; the report whereof was raised to so high a pitch
of old, that in a book in the last edition of a pretty bulk, written in the Latine
tongue by one Dempster, there is mention made, what for armes and arts, of at least
five thousand illustrious men of Scotland, the last liver whereof dyed above fifty
yeers ago.
Nor did their succession so far degenerate from the race of so worthy progenitors,
but that even of late, although before the intestine garboyles of this Island, several