The things that ha’ aye moved me ha’ moved thousands, aye millions o’ other men.  There’s joy in makin’ ithers happy.  There’s hard work in it, tae, and the laborer is worthy o’ his hire.

Then here’s anither point.  Wad I work as I ha’ worked were I allowed but such a salary as some committee of folk that knew nothing o’ my work, and what it cost me, and meant tae me in time ta’en frae ma wife and ma bairn at hame?  I’ll be tellin’ ye the answer tae that question, gi’en ye canna answer it for yersel’.  It’s no!  And it’s sae, I’m thinkin’, wi’ most of you who read the words I’ve written.  Ye’ll mind yer own affairs, and sae muckle o’ yer neighbors as he’s not able to keep ye from findin’ oot when ye tak’ the time for a bit gossip!

It’ll be all verra weel to talk of socialism and one thing and another.  We’ve much tae do tae mak’ the world a better place to live in.  But what I canna see, for the life o’ me, is why it should be richt to throw awa’ all our fathers have done.  Is there no good in the institutions that have served the world up to now?  Are we to mak’ everything ower new?  I’m no thinking that, and I believe no man is thinking that, truly.  The man who preaches the destruction of everything that is and has been has some reasons of his own not creditable to either his brain or his honesty, if you’ll ask me what I think.

Let us think o’ what these folk wad be destroying.  The hame, for one thing.  The hame, and the family.  They’ll talk to us o’ the state.  The state’s a grand thing—­a great thing.  D’ye ken what the state is these new fangled folk are aye talkin’ of?  It’s no new thing.  It’s just the bit country Britons ha’ been dying for, a’ these weary years in the trenches.  It’s just Britain, the land we’ve a’ loved and wanted to see happy and safe—­safe frae the Hun and frae the famine he tried to bring upon it.  Do these radicals, as they call themselves—­they’d tak’ every name they please to themselves!—­think they love their state better than the boys who focht and deed and won loved their country?

Eh, and let’s think back a bit, just a wee bit, into history.  There’s a reason for maist of the things there are in the world.  Sometimes it’s a good reason; whiles it’s a bad one.  But there’s a reason, and you maun e’en be reasonable when you come to talk o’ making changes.

In the beginning there was just man, wasna there, wi’ his woman, when he could find her, and catch her, and tak’ her wi’ him tae his cave, and their bairns.  And a man, by his lane, was in trouble always wi’ the great beasties they had in yon days.  Sae it came that he found it better and safer tae live close by wi’ other men, and what more natural than that they should be those of his ane bluid kin?  Sae the family first, and then the clan, came into being.  And frae them grew the tribe, and finally the nation.