Allan Ramsay. [A biography.] - National Library of Scotland

CHAPTER III
scotland in the eighteenth century ;
Ramsay's marriage— 1707-12
the union ;
An important stage in Allan Ramsay's life's journey
had now been reached. He was of age, he was a bur-
gess of the town, he was a member, or free, of one of
the most influential of the Crafts, or Guilds, in the
capital, but, greatest step of all, he had started in business
for himself, and had flung himself, with a sort of fierce
determination to succeed, into that hand-to-hand fight
with fortune for the sustenance of life, from which each
of us emerges either made or marred.
At a time when all the youthful Ramsay's faculties
were beginning to be strung to their utmost tension of
achievement, strange would it have been if that of obser-
vation were not as eagerly exercised.
Scotland in general, and Edinburgh in particular, were
at this period in the throes of a new political birth. The
epoch of transition commenced in 1707, and ended only
when the dangers of the repeated rebellions of 17 15
and 1745 showed the supercilious statesmen by the
Thames—the Harleys, the Walpoles, the Pelhams—that
conciliation, not intimidation, was the card to play in
binding Scotland to her greater neighbour. A patriotism
that had burned clear and unwavering from the days of