The "Edinburgh Review" has become to all intents and purposes an English
journal, and "Blackwood" has lost all those characteristics by which it
was in former times distinguished from the magazines published south of
the Tweed.

Seeing these facts, we can scarcely fail to agree with the Review already
quoted, in the admission that there are "probably fewer leading individual
thinkers and literary guides in Scotland at present than at any other
period of its history since the early part of the last century," since the
day when Scotland itself lost its individuality. The same journal informs
us that "there is now scarcely an instance of a Scotchman holding a
learned position in any other country," and farther says that "the small
number of names of literary Scotchmen known throughout Europe for eminence
in literature and science is of itself sufficient to show to how great an
extent the present race of Scotchmen have lost the position which their
ancestors held in the world of letters." [1]

[Footnote 1: _North British Review_, May, 1853.]

How, indeed, could it be otherwise? Centralization tends to carry to
London all the wealth and all the expenditure of the kingdom, and thus to
destroy everywhere the local demand for books or newspapers, or for men
capable of producing either. Centralization taxes the poor people of the
north of Scotland, and their complaints of distress are answered by an
order for their expulsion, that place may be made for sheep and shepherds,
neither of whom make much demand for books. Centralization appropriates
millions for the improvement of London and the creation of royal palaces
and pleasure-grounds in and about that city, while Holyrood, and all other
of the buildings with which Scottish history is connected, are allowed to
go to ruin. Centralization gives libraries and museums to London, but it