In her article on Sir Archibald Alison, Ella Bruce notes his support for the Confederacy, but one should add that his interest in the American Civil War went a bit further, despite his “humanitarian values”. Alison benefited to the tune of £4,000 (about £340,000 today) as his share of compensation following the freeing of his family’s slaves on the estate of Bellevue on St Vincent.

As a sheriff in Glasgow, he had no choice but to observe the poor of the time in all their misery. He developed rather strong views, which he freely expressed in his numerous essays, for example that the urban poor should reduce their fertility and study the good habits of the middle class in order to rise out of poverty. There was no hope for those living in places like the Highlands, whose fertility was of course notorious, because their only potential exemplars, their landlords, were absentees.

Ewan Kennedy