Mark Coleman Wallace PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

consequences brought all political discussion among the young men in these
debating societies under suspicion.” 14
Unfortunately for Scotland, the French Revolution was a watershed
event in terms of the nature of Enlightenment sociability. Michael Lynch
astutely observes that the “new strains brought on by the French Revolution
were undermining the closed world of the literati.” 15 He further notes that
142
the Select Society had faded in popularity at the seeming height of its
influence, in the early 1760s. A generation later, the Speculative
Society, home of most of the later literati, saw attendance at its meetings
decline after 1789; the proposal in 1794, supported by Walter Scott and
Francis Jeffrey, that the Society be allowed to discuss ‘the political
topics of the day’, split it asunder. Politics had infiltrated the world of
the clubs…The unique atmosphere which for almost a century had
stimulated and cosseted the brilliant world of the literati dissolved. 16
It was this infiltration that was responsible, as Lynch asserts, for the
demise of various associations; it was also this intrusion that was to blame for
the near-collapse of Scottish freemasonry. Although Koselleck maintains that
masons rejected political and religious discussions, mainly to “convince the
government that the secret society was harmless and deserved toleration,”
politics soon became an integral part of the society. 17 Furthermore, “under their
common rule in the sign of virtue they had no need of political tricks and
external constructs such as the balance of power. The inner union along
guaranteed happiness.” 18 Pressured by a government intent on eradicating any
14
Ibid.
15
Michael Lynch, Scotland: A New History (London, 2000), 349-350.
16
Ibid, 350.
17
Koselleck, Critique and Crisis, 73-74.
18 Ibid, 75.