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Rob Roy — Volume 02 by Sir Walter Scott
page 18 of 332 (05%)
out hawks' e'en, or ae kindly Scot cheat anither. But nae doubt things
were strangely changed in his country sin' the sad and sorrowfu' Union;"
an event to which Andrew referred every symptom of depravity or
degeneracy which he remarked among his countrymen, more especially the
inflammation of reckonings, the diminished size of pint-stoups, and other
grievances, which he pointed out to me during our journey.

For my own part, I held myself, as things had turned out, acquitted of
all charge of the mare, and wrote to my uncle the circumstances under
which she was carried into Scotland, concluding with informing him that
she was in the hands of justice, and her worthy representatives, Bailie
Trumbull and Mr. Clerk Touthope, to whom I referred him for farther
particulars. Whether the property returned to the Northumbrian
fox-hunter, or continued to bear the person of the Scottish attorney, it
is unnecessary for me at present to say.

We now pursued our journey to the north-westward, at a rate much slower
than that at which we had achieved our nocturnal retreat from England.
One chain of barren and uninteresting hills succeeded another, until the
more fertile vale of Clyde opened upon us; and, with such despatch as we
might, we gained the town, or, as my guide pertinaciously termed it, the
city, of Glasgow. Of late years, I understand, it has fully deserved the
name, which, by a sort of political second sight, my guide assigned to
it. An extensive and increasing trade with the West Indies and American
colonies, has, if I am rightly informed, laid the foundation of wealth
and prosperity, which, if carefully strengthened and built upon, may one
day support an immense fabric of commercial prosperity; but in the
earlier time of which I speak, the dawn of this splendour had not arisen.
The Union had, indeed, opened to Scotland the trade of the English
colonies; but, betwixt want of capital, and the national jealousy of the
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