"Mr Cunningham said that they had once more met on that historic spot to demand the restoration of their National Scottish Parliament with full control over all Scottish affairs, in order that the historical continuity of centuries gone might be preserved," the newspaper reported.

"He said that for the English there was an assumed Scottish Inferiority complex, and it had also been assumed that Scotland owed its prosperity today to the Act of Union. But the dominant partner [England] had taken care that Scotland should always remain in an inferior position. Any profiteer, any newspaper shark, anyone in England who had got enough money to pay into the governing Party's funds was made a Lord and sat by virtue of his money a hereditary legislator in England. But their ancient aristocracy in Scotland, the men whose pedigree was almost as old as yonder hills, had to be elected.

"They [Scots] might decry sentiment but it was sentiment that drove them on. Who had not been abroad, discovering when St Andrew's Day has fallen, wherever Scots were gathered, how you can move them by talking of Wallace and Bruce, of Burns, of the misty highlands, the rolling streams? It is then you will see the perverted genius of the Scots arise and hear their cheers."