The Scottish Enlightenment will die on April 1st 2024, exactly 327 years, eight months and 24 days after the incident that provoked it. For on April 1st the Hate Crime and Public Order Act (Scotland) 2021 comes into force, an Act which will criminalise speech and opinion deemed ‘hateful’ even if spoken in the privacy of your own home.
On January 8th 1697, Thomas Aikenhead, a 20 year-old student, was marched the two miles from the Old Tolbooth Prison on the High Street to a windswept sandy hillock just to the west of the causeway that crossed the marshes between Edinburgh and the port town of Leith, known as Gallow Lee. Surrounded by the pious prayers of the clergymen of the Kirk (the Church of Scotland), Thomas was hanged by the neck until he was dead.
What was Thomas – a murderer? A rapist? Was he one of Edinburgh’s notorious ‘Resurrection Men’? No. Young Thomas’s crime was that in an Edinburgh tavern on Christmas Eve 1696, he had a drink and went on a rant offending the Church and its stranglehold on Scottish culture. He was reported, arrested and tried: “The jury found Aikenhead guilty of cursing and railing against God, denying the incarnation and the Trinity and scoffing at the Scriptures.”
Thomas Aikenhead was the last person to be hanged for Blasphemy in Britain. As such he became a martyr and inspiration. The hanging of a young man for the crime of having a rant in a pub late at night became seen as an act of tyranny and oppression so heinous it was the spark that turned a barren minor nation on the north west fringe of Europe into the blazing furnace of ideas that was the Scottish Enlightenment. Ideas that would change the world forever.
The execution appalled Scottish Society at the time and was both the high tide of the theocratic tyranny of 17th Century Kirk and its tombstone. With Aikenhead’s execution died all moral authority of those who would control the speech, conscience and opinions of others.
Scottish intellectuals queued up to condemn the act and their voice of outrage coalesced into arguably the most important and internationally influential Enlightenment of all.
The great 19th Century historian Lord Macaulay famously wrote of the incident:
The preachers who were the poor boy’s murderers crowded round him at the gallows, and… insulted heaven with prayers more blasphemous than anything he had uttered.
The exact spot where Thomas died has long been built over. The Leith causeway became modern Leith Walk, the marshes were drained and the city expanded to the sea. General consensus has the spot somewhere in the vicinity of Shrub Place about halfway down the walk.
On the morning of his execution he wrote to his friends the following words:
It is a principle innate and co-natural to every man to have an insatiable inclination to the truth, and to seek for it as for hid treasure.
As a Scot who grew up in the 1970s in the drawing rooms of Edinburgh’s New Town, the architectural manifestation of the Scottish Enlightenment, I am truly appalled that the legacy of Aikenhead and the Scottish Enlightenment – a historical event far more relevant to the modern world than the War of Independence of the early 14th century that so enthrals the SNP and its activists, an event which put Scotland on the map of the world and one of which the nation can be rightly proud – has been trashed by the Scottish Parliament and the Yousaf Government. From April 1st 2024, saying the wrong thing at your own dinner table, let alone in a drunken pub rant like young Thomas did, will once again land you in significant trouble with the law, 327 years, eight months and 24 days after Thomas died.
Mr. Yousaf, his ministers and those who drafted and will enforce this law would do well to remember how history judged those who hanged Thomas Aikenhead on that bleak winter morning on the road to Leith. In doing so they should recall that this gross act of overreach and tyranny was the high tide of the power of the Kirk, power which was swept aside by the forces unleashed when the people said ‘enough’.
C.J. Strachan is the pseudonym of a concerned Scot.
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‘The Enlightenment’ more propaganda. Many of the ‘ideas’ long pre-date the 17th century including Smith’s or Ricardo’s economics. You can find the ‘invisible hand’ theory from 15th century Spain. Galileo and that nonsense – disproven more times than the Big Bang has been proven wrong. Physics was kick started in the 13th century when Aristotle was finally booted to the side. Much of what is attributed to this period is fantasy. None of these intellectuals invented much if anything. Like Newton they ate at the table prepared for them by others. And worse. There is a straight red line from this period to the Corona-Climate fascisms and ‘The Science’. Real science was dead by the mid 19th century. Maths took over. Mechanical proofs (eg Relativity, Plant food causes climate) no longer are needed.
Much of what you say here Is sure to be correct but let’s focus on Useless Yousaf,s new decree which he’s being trying to implement while he was Krankie,s lap dog ( more like a cuckoo actually) he wants this new law because he knows people will & are slagging him off !! So even this post would possibly earn porridge time !! HOW did the Scottish populace back the SNP while it’s lurched along from Salmond , Sturgeon & now this slimy Sh1tbag of the highest order ! He brings nothing & I mean nothing of merit or benefit to anyone or anything , all over the uk these type of agents of discontent are being installed to finish Bliar,s devolved dirty work , the uk is going down the Shitter faster that last nights vindaloo , make no mistake this creep would have put the noose around poor Thomas’s neck had he been there !! Get him out ASAP !!
“Maths took over. Mechanical proofs (eg Relativity, Plant food causes climate) no longer are needed.”
All aircraft and rockets and boats are still tested in the real world. No matter how much some wish to rule the world with mathematics, or even AI, reality rules. This applies to just about everything, including Gender ideology.
As an aside you seem to be bitter about something? What about the central point of this article or is that merely the back scenery for your arguments?
From the 13th century to roughly the beginning of the 18th century there were approximately 150 inventions and 11 elements that were available for humans to use. Beginning around 1750 the scientific discovery of all of the remaining 81 elements took off across Northern Europe. At the same time mostly uneducated men in the UK were creating machines and tools at an unprecedented rate. This new energy was copied almost throughout the Western World, so that by 1850 there were 450 inventions and 47 new elements available to humanity. By 1930, or 80 years later, there were around 10.000 inventions and the entire periodic table was available to humanity. In the same time frame human travel had gone from horse and sailing ship to steam train, steam ship, motor vehicle, airplane and rocket. From 1250 to 1730 just 3 extra elements had been added to the 9 already known about.
Many important changes happened during the 17th century such as the English Civil war and the end of Autocratic Sovereign rule. Before that the Protestant Reformation had already ended Autocratic Vatican rule. Within this context is the important Scottish Enlightenment and it’s important because it happened and what came out of it benefited the many.
Thank the gods for the internet and its immediate access to receipts, because people should never ever forget this gem from Yousaf. What sort of person climbs to the rank of leader of their country and demonstrates simultaneously how unpatriotic and how racist they are towards 96% of the native population? Or does racism only apply one way in his authoritarian Scotland? I think it’s fairly obvious where his loyalties lie;
https://twitter.com/1AlasadiHayder/status/1769543030321918330
Master Yousef is like Sunak in that he is now charge because the previous elected FM was removed.
If our countries survive this war relatively intact there is no doubt that this deeply evil muslim monster will be held up as the fifth grade fifth columnist that he is.
I wonder if anyone will be convicted for hateful words against white people.
Very well said – one of the most important essays I’ve read here.
This quote needs more light:
“It is a principle innate and co-natural to every man to have an insatiable inclination to the truth, and to seek for it as for hid treasure.”
Thomas Aikenhead
Would that any twenty year old in today’s population could write with such eloquence and insight.
Indeed, and CJ Strachan has my heartfelt sympathy for the distress and shame he (or she) clearly feels for the parlous state of things in Scotland. To have your country regressed to the primitive, immoral lack of respect for free speech (called blasphemy) that existed 327 years ago as to get a man hanged for expressing an opinion is hard enough.
To have such oppression re-implemented in 2024 by a member of a cult that has NEVER tolerated free speech in its whole history, and who has now introduced punishment for ‘blasphemy’ of said cult is the stuff of nightmares.
Those responsible for deliberately importing the alien cult into our country without democratic consultation and putting us all at risk of being transported to conditions in the late 7th century AD Middle East are TRAITORS. They deserve the worst punishment for traitors.
This is all Post-Modernism, except there is no such thing as the direction that the Post-Modernists are driving us is back to before the modern world, so it is Pre-Modernism. The only possible world that must come after the extraordinary and historically unprecedented Modernism is better and more improved modernism. We are too far down the road to return to some non-existent and imaginary idyllic past.
The SNP are the most disgusting squirming parasites. ——-There I said it before April 1st so that I won’t be arrested and hung by the neck until dead. It is ironic that this insidious piece of legislation comes into force on April Fools day because it is only fools that vote for these cretinous goons. ——-I have an old friend who votes SNP and wants to be in the EU so I said to him “Why do you think this hate crime stuff is a good idea”? He replied that you shouldn’t be allowed to go calling people “fat bas…ds”. ——I said “What, not even in your own house”? He said “No”. ————So there you have it. The braindead want the government coming into their house to decide what you can and cannot say. —Are these people insane?
Once again, people fall into two categories:
Those who follow rules
Those who think
It’s as old as the hills…
Calling somebody a “fat bastard” is taken almost as a warm greeting in the North West.
Body positivity and single mother?
That’s evading the question. Why shouldn’t it be allowed to call people excessively inflated by-blows? And more generally, what’s the precise list of words which mustn’t be applied to other people and who maintains it according to which criteria?
Does the government want to come into your house or do they want your children and relatives to inform on you? That would help destroy families and isolate people. Official solutions to this predicament may be the loving embrace of the State or a trip to a walk-in euthanasia centre (TBC).
I don’t mean the government literally come into your house. But their policies do. We have this absurdity now where people over hearing you say something in private can claim what you are saying is “hate” because they say so. —-Things are getting very sinister, and we are turning into something like Yugoslavia pre 1989 where the people went about in the doldrums afraid to speak about anything.
Yes, watch out for brainwashed kids and neighbours well-paid to snoop.
Scotland is heading towards a Stalinist State. Maybe that’s what the ‘S’ in SNP stands for. Parents went to gulags or death because their brainwashed kids grassed them up for ‘wrong ideas’ expressed in ‘wrong speech’ in the non-sanctity of their own homes.
But I dare say the current dire leader of the SNP (even worse than the last!) is too ignorant to know any of that and would probably approve if he did. A Leftard izlamic – a horrible combination until one sect starts to fight the other for dominance. Any bets on which will win?
“It is a principle innate and co-natural to every man to have an insatiable inclination to the truth, and to seek for it as for hid treasure.”
Beautiful. Words to live by. And die by, as that great British man did, and future generations benefited from the amazing science, technology and philosophy that followed in the wake of his sacrifice.
A great achievement, to find someone even worse than Sturgeon. Well done Scotland! Showing the way for Wales as well!
Thank you for this eye-opening historical article, honouring the memory of that courageous young man only starting out in life: Thomas Aikenhead.
I hope the Scots will be able to kick Humza out as the Irish have kicked out Varadkar, and abolish his attempt at imposing “Creeping Sharia” upon the Indigenous people of Scotland.
It aims to highlight how we stopped sentencing people to death back then and now disgusting Progressives want to go down that very same path again. OK so they cannot hang us by the neck these days so they metaphorically hang us for having an opinion they don’t want us to have. How is it that those who vote for these Political Parties cannot see that this not freedom? How can they not see that the government telling you what you are to think is not freedom? It seems they are putting all that aside because they think they are being controlled by Tories and the English and would run away to let Germans at Brussels do that instead, but insist that would be “Independence”. ——The SNP vote went up after the Scots fell out of love with Blair’s government but now it is on the way down, and people need to wake up and make sure the graph heads right downhill as fast as possible, or they will continue to turn into the Socialist Republic of Scotlandia.
Socialist Republic of USSE
The UN Socialist Republic of Scotistan
run away to let Germans at Brussels do that instead,
The EU commission consists of one member of each EU member state.
And?
And as Germany is one of 27 member states, there’s exactly one German who’s presently part of the EC and that’s Laymen’s Ursel.
Guckste hier:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_der_Leyen_Commission
Nix deutsch.
Come off it. We know that Germany and France vie for predominance through influence in the EU and Germany always emerges uber alles.
Why did 17.4 million Brits vote to get the hell out?
Yeah but Germany is the big boss. The economic power. Hey I love Germany. It is a beautiful country, or at least it was till you started bringing in the millions of migrants, but I don’t want to be part of a political Union with Germans or Latvians or Portuguese —–People in Poland or Italy are not in the least bit interested in what people in Scotland want and vice versa.
Few 20 year old students today would be so brave. Most reject truth, hide behind today’s woke cause, and believe whatever snake oil salesman shouts the loudest. Oppression is their mantra, as it was in 1697.
An excellent article. Poor Scotland. But we should be aware that England and Wales may well follow suit. Starmer and the new man in Wales aren’t out for our good!