Item #229498 A Letter to the Editor of the Edinburgh Weekly Journal from Malachi Malagrowther, Esq. on the Proposed Change of Currency and Other Late Alterations, as They Affect, or are Intended to Affect, the Kingdom of Scotland [With:] A Second Letter … [And:] A Third Letter …. Scotland, Sir Walter Scott.

“change every thing in Scotland to an English model”

A Letter to the Editor of the Edinburgh Weekly Journal from Malachi Malagrowther, Esq. on the Proposed Change of Currency and Other Late Alterations, as They Affect, or are Intended to Affect, the Kingdom of Scotland [With:] A Second Letter … [And:] A Third Letter ….

Edinburgh: Printed by James Ballantyne and Company for William Blackwood, Edinburgh: and T. Cadell, Strand, London, 1826.

Price: $1,000.00


About the item

Second edition of the first two Letters, First edition of the Third Letter. 60; 86, [2, blank]; 39 pp. 1 vols. 8vo. “change every thing in Scotland to an English model”. Half red morocco preserving nineteenth-century marbled boards. Fine. Todd & Bowden 186Ac, 187Ac, 188Ab. Kress III C1778, C1781, C1784.

Item #229498

“In this series of ‘Letters’ defending the issuance of Scottish banknotes Scott benefits from his work on Swift by patterning the Malachi Malagrowther letters on Swift’s Drapier’s Letters” (Todd & Bowden p. 621).

“In February 1826 there may have been a degree of calculation in Scott’s entering the debate on a government measure introduced to deal with the economic crisis which would have restricted the rights of the Scottish banks to issue their own notes, but Scott represented it as a nationalist issue, ‘the late disposition to change every thing in Scotland to an English model’ (Journal, 94). In February and March he wrote three letters to the editor of the Edinburgh Weekly Journal in which he used the currency issue as an exemplum for the larger tendency. The letters caused a sensation. Ministerial friends were very angry, but withdrew the measure. The banks were grateful; taking a lead from his old rival in love, William Forbes, they agreed to the creation of a trust for the settling of Scott’s debts, and The Letters of Malachi Malagrowther, as the letters are now known, is recognized as a classic in political argument” (DNB).

A complete set, uncommon.