Burns and Politics

Abstract

In a letter of 28 February 1793 to his publisher William Creech, Burns drew a distinction between ‘Great Folks whom I respect [and] Little Folks whom I love’ (CL, 307). In fact there were very few aristocratic Great Folks he genuinely admired (with obvious exceptions like the Earl of Glencairn); for example, he described the 4th Duke of Queensberry ironically as a ‘Great Man’ and accurately as ‘a flaming Zealot [with] a character of which one cannot speak with patience’ (CL, 432). In the same letter (of 9 December 1789 to Graham of Fintry) he described himself as ‘too little a man to have any political attachments’ (CL, 432). Contemporary party politics, indeed, he saw as a game played by the great at the expense of the poor (as his Election Ballads indicate). His political opinions sought wider horizons than those displayed in Ayrshire or Dumfriesshire.