Wedderburn book; a history of the Wedderburns in ... - waughfamily.ca

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PREFACE.
THE
history of a Scottish family, written for private circulation among Prefaco.
its members and those connected with it, needs no apology to secure
its welcome by them. An interest in their forbears is proverbially
characteristic of the Scottish race, so that Lockhart has spoken of the "ell
of genealogy " appropriate to every Scotsman. This feeling, ineradicable
from their character, exists among all classes of the people, and is based,
not, as is sometimes supposed by those who neither share nor understand it,
on mere pride, but on a sense of clanship which extends even beyond the
present members of the clan. " It is the mark of the Scot of all classes,"
says a great Scottish writer,^ whose knowledge of the national character was
unrivalled, " that he stands in an attitude towards the past unthinkable to
Englishmen, and remembers and cherishes the memory of his forbears, o-ood
and bad ; there burns alive in him a sense of identity with the dead
even to the twentieth generation."
This, as expressing the quality of the Scottish feeling, is admirably said,
but it must not, I think, be taken to exclude others than Scotsmen from an
interest in their progenitors, which is, I believe, common to every nation,
and as old as the most ancient race. Thus Rousseau confesses that of
all pride none, except that based on personal merit, is as pardonable as
pride of birth ;- and even the cynical Gibbon has no sneer for a love of
ancestry. "A lively desire," he says in his Minaoir of mj/ oirn Life, "of
knowing and recording our ancestors so generally prevails, that it must
depend on the influence of some common principle in the minds of men.
We seem to have lived in the persons of our forefathers ; it is the labour
and reward of vanity to extend the term of this ideal longevity. . . . Our
calmer judgment will rather tend to moderate than to suppress the pride of
an ancient and worthy race. The satirist may laugh, the philosopher may
preach, but Reason herself will respect the prejudices and habits, which have
been consecrated by the experience of mankind. Few there are who can
sincerel}' despise in others an advantage of which they are secretly ambitious
to partake."
And apart from such sentiment, the study of the past history of a
family may be encouraged on various grounds. Its critical examination gives
no little insight into the value of historical evidence ; it serves (as Sir
Walter Scott has said)^ "to perpetuate a great deal of what is rare and
valuable in ancient manners, and to record many curious and minute facts
which could have been preserved and conveyed through no other medium " ;
the scientist may glean from it some material towards formulating a law «.f
heredity ; while 'the moralist may see in the rapid decline of many families,
some evidence of "grit" and good quality in those that have kept themselves
prosperous and notable through a long course of years.
' R. L. Stevensou, Weir nf Uei-mistnn (1S96\ pp. 113-14.
' "S'ilestun orgueil pardounable apres celui qui se tire da nii-'rite [)er»ouucI c'c»t cclui nui m lire