fact that it was generally in line with the arguments of the defenders
of the Edwardian policy in Scotland; and it cannot be denied that it
holds the field to-day, in spite of Mr. Robertson's attack on it in
Appendix R of his _Scotland under her Early Kings_.

The writer of the present volume ventures to hope that he has, at all
events, done something to make out a case for re-consideration of the
subject. The political facts on which rests the argument just stated
will be found in the text, and an Appendix contains the more important
references to the Highlanders in mediæval Scottish literature, and
offers a brief account of the feudalization of Scotland. Our argument
amounts only to a modification, and not to a complete reversal of the
current theory. No historical problems are more difficult than those
which refer to racial distribution, and it is impossible to speak
dogmatically on such a subject. That the English blood of the Lothians,
and the English exiles after the Norman Conquest, did modify the race
over whom Malcolm Canmore ruled, we do not seek to deny. But that it was
a modification and not a displacement, a victory of civilization and
not of race, we beg to suggest. The English influences were none the
less strong for this, and, in the end, they have everywhere prevailed.
But the Scotsman may like to think that mediæval Scotland was not
divided by an abrupt racial line, and that the political unity and
independence which it obtained at so great a cost did correspond to a
natural and a national unity which no people can, of itself, create.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Spanish and Venetian Calendars of State Papers. Cf.
especially the reference to the succour afforded by Scotland to France
in Spanish Calendar, i. 210.]