In the final two chapters of this book we will address the issue of Scottish support for the government, and the extent to which the Scots were prepared to rally to the defence of the British state at this time of crisis. Support for the British state is divided into two separate categories, those of ‘demonstrations of loyalty’ and ‘loyalist ideology’, the first of which will be the focus of this chapter. To an extent, this is an artificial distinction since many demonstrations of loyalty to the state also included a loyalist argument or message, and thereby formed a part of loyalist ideology. But while there may be a degree of overlap between the two, it has none the less been deemed useful to single out the more direct contributions which were made to the political debate of the 1790s from the loyalist side in a separate chapter. Addressing the question of support for the state, however, invariably invokes the twin concepts of loyalism and patriotism as well as the question of what constitutes genuine loyalty or patriotism, and we will address this first. Moreover, before we go on to address the different ways in which Scots demonstrated loyalty to the British state, it is necessary to look briefly at the encouragement the government gave to its supporters, as well as the various events of the decade that led to demonstrations of support for the authorities. The first two sections of this chapter will deal with these issues, though the question of genuine loyalty– or not– is arguably one that runs through the whole of the analysis.

Loyalism– defining the concept

The two concepts of loyalism and patriotism have been widely used by historians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to describe and analyse support for the state in a wide sense. For Linda Colley, for example, a jointly British patriotism directed against France was a central part of the development of a British identity over the course of the eighteenth century. Yet, while the concepts are often discussed, they are not always clearly defined, or at least it is not usually made clear whether they should be seen as fully distinct, or whether there is a degree of overlap between them.