Making Meritocracy: Lessons from

China and India, from Antiquity to the

Present Tarun Khanna
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Making Meritocracy
 MODERN SOUTH ASIA
Ashutosh Varshney, Series Editor
Pradeep Chhibber, Associate Series Editor
Editorial Board
Kaushik Basu (Cornell University)
Sarah Besky (Cornell University)
Jennifer Bussell (University of California, Berkeley)
Veena Das (Johns Hopkins University)
Patrick Heller (Brown University)
Niraja Gopal Jayal (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
Devesh Kapur (Johns Hopkins University)
Atul Kohli (Princeton University)
Pratap Bhanu Mehta (Ashoka University)
Shandana Khan Mohmand (University of Sussex)
Ashley Tellis (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace)
Steven Wilkinson (Yale University)
The Other One Percent
Sanjoy Chakravorty, Devesh Kapur, and Nirvikar Singh
Social Justice through Inclusion
Francesca R. Jensenius
Dispossession without Development
Michael Levien
The Man Who Remade India
Vinay Sitapati
Business and Politics in India
Edited by Christophe Jaffrelot, Atul Kohli, and Kanta Murali
Clients and Constituents
Jennifer Bussell
Gambling with Violence
Yelena Biberman
Mobilizing the Marginalized
Amit Ahuja
The Absent Dialogue
Anit Mukherjee
When Nehru Looked East
Francine Frankel
 Capable Women, Incapable States
Poulami Roychowdhury
Farewell to Arms
Rumela Sen
Negotiating Democracy and Religious Pluralism
Karen Barkey, Sudipta Kaviraj, and Vatsal Naresh
Cultivating Democracy
Mukulika Banerjee
Patching Development
Rajesh Veeraraghavan
Making Meritocracy
Edited by Tarun Khanna and Michael Szonyi
 Making Meritocracy
Lessons from China and India, from Antiquity to the
Present
Edited by
TARUN KHANNA AND MICHAEL SZONYI
 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Khanna, Tarun, editor. | Szonyi, Michael, editor.
Title: Making meritocracy : lessons from China and India, from antiquity to the present /
edited by Michael Szonyi and Tarun Khanna.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2022] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021050769 (print) | LCCN 2021050770 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197602478 (paperback) | ISBN 9780197602461 (hardback) | ISBN
9780197602492 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Social stratification—China—History. |
Social stratification—India—History. |
Merit (Ethics)—History. | Power (Social sciences)—China—History. |
Power (Social sciences)—India—History.
Classification: LCC HM 821 .M3447 2022 (print) | LCC HM 821 (ebook) |
DDC 303.30951—dc23/eng/20211207
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021050769
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021050770
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197602461.001.0001
 Contents

Acknowledgments
Contributors

Introduction
Tarun Khanna and Michael Szonyi

I PHILOSOPHICAL
1. Political Theologies of Justice: Meritocratic Values from a Global
Perspective
Michael Puett
2. Merit in the Mirror of Democracy: Caste and Affirmative Action
in India
Ashutosh Varshney
3. Political Meritocracy in China: The Ideal vs. the Reality
Daniel A. Bell

II HISTORICAL
4. Locating Meritocracy in Early Modern Asia: Qing China and
Mughal India
Sudev Sheth and Lawrence L. C. Zhang
5. Meritocratic Empires? South Asia ca. 1600–1947
Sumit Guha
6. Meritocracy and the Making of the Chinese Academe Redux,
1912–1952
James Z. Lee, Bamboo Yunzhu Ren, and Chen Liang

III CONTEMPORARY
 7. The Origins and Effects of Affirmative Action Policies in India
Ashwini Deshpande
8. Merit and Caste at Elite Institutions: The Case of the IIT
Ajantha Subramanian
9. The National College Entrance Examination and the Myth of
Meritocracy in Post-Mao China
Zachary M. Howlett

IV PROSPECTIVE
10. The Singaporean Meritocracy: Theory, Practice, and Policy
Implications
Vincent Chua, Randall Morck, and Bernard Yeung
11. The Merits and Limits of China’s Modern Universities
William C. Kirby
12. Reimagining Merit in India: Cognition and Affirmative Action
D. Shyam Babu, Chandra Bhan Prasad, and Devesh Kapur
13. Meritocracy Enabled by Technology, Grounded in Science
Varun Aggarwal
Afterword
Tarun Khanna and Michael Szonyi

Bibliography
Index
 Acknowledgments

This project was more than five years from inception to completion,
and it involved workshops in four cities including approximately one
hundred speakers. The list of participants, presenters, audience
members, and staff who made these events a success is long, and
we are grateful to all, even if it is impractical to thank everyone by
name.
Our greatest thanks go to the contributing authors, all of whom
did far more to ensure the cohesiveness and coherence of the
chapters than is normally expected of contributors to a collection of
essays. The informal and electronic conversations that the project
generated were enormously satisfying intellectual engagements. We
especially thank Mark Elliott, Vice Provost of International Affairs at
Harvard, who initially conceived of the project with Tarun. Besides
the authors themselves, others who contributed greatly to the
intellectual work of the project include Kanti Bajpai, Peter Bol,
Shivshankar Menon, Manjari Miller, Felix Oberholzer-Gee, and Suraj
Yengde.
The project was anchored by a series of formal and informal
seminars and workshops in Cambridge, expertly coordinated by two
Harvard centers—the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and the
Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute. Our workshop in
Beijing was ably coordinated by Prof. Duan Peijun and staff at the
Central Party School, in Shanghai, by Wang Yi and the staff of the
Harvard Center Shanghai, and in New Delhi, by the Mittal Institute’s
local team. Julia Cai, Chelsea Ferrell, Meena Hewett, Caitlin Keliher,
Sanjay Kumar, and Abanish Rizal all provided expert assistance. Our
thanks to all of them. Sarah Bramao-Ramos joined the team as
editorial assistant and worked very effectively to ensure that the
final outcome met the highest standards.
 As the pages that follow will make clear, the making of
meritocracy is a controversial subject over which tempers easily
flare. We the co-editors are responsible for any errors.
 Contributors

Varun Aggarwal is a technology entrepreneur, an Artificial

Intelligence researcher, and a policy enthusiast. He co-founded one
of the world’s largest skills assessment companies. He has published
a non-fiction book on the science ecosystem in India and a novel on
the impact of AI and internet on our society. He recently co-founded
a philanthropic initiative on science policy in India.
D. Shyam Babu is Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy Research, New
Delhi. A former journalist, Mr. Babu now focuses on how economic
changes in India have been shaping social change and
transformation for the benefit of marginalized sections, especially
Dalits. He is coauthor (with Devesh Kapur and Chandra Bhan Prasad)
of Defying the Odds (2014), which brought to light the phenomenon
of Dalit businesspersons hitherto ignored by both intellectuals and
policymakers.
Daniel A. Bell is Dean of the School of Political Science and Public
Administration at Shandong University (Qingdao) and Distinguished
Chair Professor at Fudan University (Shanghai).
Vincent Chua is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology
at the National University of Singapore. He received his PhD in
sociology from the University of Toronto. His research areas include
social networks and meritocracy, educational inequalities, gender,
race, and neighborhoods. His latest work, Social Capital in
Singapore: The Power of Network Diversity (2021), investigates the
network correlates of national identity.
Ashwini Deshpande is Professor of Economics and Founding
Director of Centre for Economic Data and Analysis (CEDA) at Ashoka
University. She is the author of Grammar of Caste: Economic
Discrimination in Contemporary India (2011 hardcover; 2017
paperback), and Affirmative Action in India (2013), Oxford India
Short Introduction series.
Sumit Guha is Professor of History at the University of Texas at
Austin. He has taught at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, the Indian
Institute of Management Kolkata, Brown University, and Rutgers, the
State University of New Jersey. His previous monograph, History and
Collective Memory in South Asia, 1200–2000, was published by the
University of Washington Press in October 2019. Columbia University
Press published a new book, Tribe and State in Asia through Twenty-
five Centuries, for the Association for Asian Studies in 2021.
Zachary M. Howlett is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Yale-
NUS College at the National University of Singapore. He is a
sociocultural anthropologist who researches education, migration,
and marriage in China. He is the author of Meritocracy and Its
Discontents: Anxiety and the National College Entrance Exam in
China (2021).
Devesh Kapur is Starr Foundation Professor of South Asian
Studies, Johns Hopkins University. Earlier he served as Director of
the Center for the Advanced Study of India and the Madan Lal Sobti
Chair for the Study of Contemporary India at the University of
Pennsylvania. His recent books include Navigating the Labyrinth:
Perspectives on India’s Higher Education; The Other One Percent:
Indians in America; Rethinking Public Institutions in India, The Costs
of Democracy: Political Finance in India, and Regulation in India:
Design, Capacity, Performance.
Tarun Khanna is the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard
Business School where he studies the role of entrepreneurs across
developing countries. He is the first director of Harvard’s Lakshmi
Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, a university-wide endeavor
that brings together natural and social scientists with artists and
humanists in joint academic pursuits.
William C. Kirby is T. M. Chang Professor of China Studies at
Harvard University and Spangler Family Professor of Business
Administration at Harvard Business School. He is a University
Distinguished Service Professor. Professor Kirby chairs the Harvard
China Fund and Harvard Center Shanghai. At Harvard he has served
as Director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Chairman of
the History Department, and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and
Sciences. His current projects include the rise and international
challenges of Chinese technology firms, and the race for global
leadership in higher education. His newest book is Empires of Ideas:
Creating the Modern University from Germany to America to China
(2022).
James Z. Lee is Yan Ai Foundation Chair Professor of Social Science
and Chair Professor in Humanities at the Hong Kong University of
Science and Technology.
Chen Liang is a Professor and Associate Dean of the School of
History at Nanjing University. In 2019, the PRC Ministry of Education
named him an “Outstanding Young Talent.”
Randall Morck is the Jarislowsky Distinguished Chair in Finance
and Distinguished University Professor of Business at the University
of Alberta, Research Associate with the NBER, and Senior Research
Fellow at the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research
(ABFER). Google Scholar records more than 44,000 citations to his
more than 100 articles (Google Scholar H index = 68). He has
advised governments and multinational institutions.
Chandra Bhan Prasad is a Dalit ideologue and Affiliate Fellow,
Mercatus Center, George Mason University. A widely cited public
intellectual, Mr. Prasad has been profiled by, among others, the New
York Times and the Washington Post. He is India’s first Dalit
columnist and his commentary appears in The Times of India, The
Economic Times, and a host of Hindi newspapers.
Michael Puett is the Walter C. Klein Professor of Chinese History
and Anthropology at Harvard University. His interests are focused on
the interrelations between history, anthropology, philosophy, and
religion, with the hope of bringing the study of China into larger
historical and comparative frameworks.
Bamboo Yunzhu Ren is a PhD candidate in social science at the
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and a 2018–2022
Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme Fellow.
Sudev Sheth is Senior Lecturer at the Lauder Institute and in the
Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania. He teaches
perspectives on entrepreneurship, global capitalism, and leadership
across the Wharton School and the School of Arts and Sciences. His
research focuses on the history of South Asia, business history of
emerging markets, family enterprise, and business-government
relations in societies past and present.
Ajantha Subramanian is Professor of Anthropology and South
Asian Studies at Harvard University. Her first book, Shorelines: Space
and Rights in South India (2009), chronicles a spatial politics of
rights on India’s southwestern coast. Her second book, The Caste of
Merit: Engineering Education in India (2019), analyzes meritocracy
as a terrain of caste struggle and its implications for democratic
transformation.
Michael Szonyi is Frank Wen-hsiung Wu Professor of Chinese
History and Director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at
Harvard University. A social historian of China, his books include The
Art of Being Governed (2017) and (with Jennifer Rudolph) The China
Questions: Critical Insights into a Rising Power (2018).
Ashutosh Varshney is Sol Goldman Professor of International
Studies and the Social Sciences, and Professor of Political Science,
Brown University, where he also directs the Center for Contemporary
South Asia. Previously, he taught at Harvard and the University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor. His books include Battles Half Won: India’s
Improbable Democracy (2013), Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus
and Muslims in India (2002), Democracy, Development and the
Countryside: Urban-Rural Struggles in India, India in the Era of
Economic Reforms (1998), and Collective Violence in Indonesia
(2010). His honors include the Guggenheim and Carnegie fellowships
and the Gregory Luebbert and Daniel Lerner Prizes. His academic
articles have appeared in leading professional journals of political
science and development. He is a columnist for The Indian Express,
and editor-in-chief of the Modern South Asia Series, Oxford
University Press, New York.
Bernard Yeung is the Stephen Riady Distinguished Professor in
Finance and Strategic Management at the National University of
Singapore Business School where he was Dean from June 2008 to
May 2019. He is also the President of the Asian Bureau of Finance
and Economic Research (ABFER). His research covers topics in
economics, finance, international business, and strategy.
Lawrence L. C. Zhang is Assistant Professor at the Division of
Humanities of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
His primary research interest is on the intersection of money and
politics in late imperial China, focusing on the formal sales of
government positions and associated questions of elite status
preservation and their implication on the rhetoric of meritocracy.
 Introduction
Tarun Khanna and Michael Szonyi

For hundreds of years society has been a battleground between two great
principles—the principle of selection by family and the principle of selection
by merit. Victory has never gone fully to one principle or the other.
—Michael Young, The Rise of the Meritocracy (1958)

How can we create a society that maximizes the opportunity of all

people to develop and use their talents and to be rewarded
accordingly? Is it even possible to construct a social system in which
opportunities, resources, rewards, and positions of leadership are
allocated on the basis of merit? Few public policy issues generate as
much analysis or rouse as much emotion as the question of how to
make society more meritocratic.
In the United States, debates around meritocracy are on a long
rolling boil. Although the idea of a level playing field for self-
advancement remains a broadly shared aspiration, one hears little
celebration of the United States as a successful meritocracy in
practice and much more lament about the demise of the ideal.
Judging by media coverage, there is a growing sense that a child’s
circumstances at birth constrain his or her future more than ever
before, and the promise that individuals can propel themselves to a
better future through their own efforts is receding.
These concerns attract our attention as social scientists. As
scholars attuned to Asia, and specifically to China and India, they
remind us of debates in other places and at other times. In 2015,
together with Mark Elliott, Michael Szonyi’s predecessor as Director
of the Fairbank Center and currently Harvard’s Vice Provost of
International Affairs, we launched a series of conversations involving
scholars, leaders of educational institutions, and policymakers. Over
the next several years we organized workshops in Cambridge,
Beijing, Shanghai, and New Delhi, which drew together more than a
hundred participants. From the conversations a smaller group of
core participants emerged whose chapters appear in this volume.
Together, the chapters represent a novel approach to pressing
questions around “making meritocracy.”
The chapters are organized into four parts. The first part is
philosophical and political; the chapters in it ask how meritocracy
has been discussed, debated, and defined in China and India,
especially with reference to the selection of political leaders. Part II
is historical; the chapters explore efforts to implement meritocracy in
China and India in the past, the historical conditions that have
limited or constrained these efforts, and the policies that have been
adopted in order to address those conditions. Some of the chapters
in this section cover one society or the other; others are explicitly
comparative. Part III moves from the past to the present, exploring
contemporary experiences and reflections on meritocracy and
institutions that are designed to achieve it. Finally, the fourth part
explores the future of meritocracy in China, India, and beyond.
We have organized the book in this way, rather than by dividing it
into one section on China and another on India, because our quest
to understand general lessons about the idea and practice of
meritocracy is best served by pairwise juxtaposition of the Chinese
and Indian experiences on particular subsets of issues. Research on
meritocracy in China and India tends to focus on different issues but
there are significant conceptual overlaps between the two. In this
introduction, we summarize the questions highlighted by the
contributors and some of the generalizable conclusions. We
elaborate on the findings of the volume in the Afterword.
A historically grounded analysis of meritocracy across the
centuries in both China and India reveals that contemporary debates
over meritocracy, rather than novel aspects of modern industrial
society, are an unconscious echo chamber of questions that have
been explored many times before. Other societies have obsessed
over these same issues, have defined the terms of the debate in
similar ways, and have explored a similar range of solutions. China
and India offer an opportunity to examine questions around the
embrace or abandonment of the idea of meritocracy, the nurturing
and allocation of talent, over the long durée. This is because of the
civilizational nature of the two societies, and because, not
unrelatedly, the two have long attracted the attention of scholars.
The choice of these two societies draws attention to multiple
empirical and theoretical possibilities, embracing variations along the
dimensions of the origins of meritocracy, the secular rise or decline
of the ideal, and indeed its episodic embrace and abandonment, and
approaches to implementation.
The pairing affords us comparative analytical purchase. China and
India are, of course, both large, populous, and proximate. They
underwent their first unifications in approximately 200 bc, under the
Qin dynasty in China and the Mauryas in India. They both endured a
century (China) or two (India) of imperialist interference and worse,
and then emerged as modern nation states roughly
contemporaneously (1949 and 1947). The theory and practice of
meritocracy display some constant features across several centuries
and different regimes in both China and India. One central aim of
this book is to articulate these patterns. And yet, there are profound
differences. As we’ll see, there are deep societal schisms in both, but
on different lines—primarily rural versus urban and Han versus non-
Han in China; primarily by caste in India.
Our interest is not exclusively, or even chiefly, historical. How
China and India conceive and operationalize meritocracy has
enormous implications, not only for the two countries themselves
but for the world as a whole. Comparison between them can
potentially offer insight about how talent is identified, nurtured,
deployed, and rewarded in contemporary societies. China’s and
India’s choices about merit are consequential not only because of
their absolute scale but also because of their inward and outward
flows in today’s globalized education market. Huge numbers of
students from those two countries travel abroad for education, and
the two countries also present opportunities to students and workers
in the rest of the world.
 Defining Merit and Meritocracy
Scholars in many societies—from Confucius to Kautilya to Voltaire to
Mill—have struggled over how merit should be defined, whether it is
inherited or can be cultivated, whether it includes both talent and
virtue, and so on. The ways in which societies assign value or merit
to individuals is contingent and historically conditioned; there is no
universal standard of merit. The definition of merit in any society is
produced or conditioned by various factors, most obviously by the
political economy of that society. Skill at wielding weapons, facility in
long-dead languages, or for that matter the ability to use or create
digital technology may be an element of merit in some societies but
not in others. But the framing of these debates in very different
contexts displays some noteworthy parallels. Putting the argument in
the broadest terms, in most societies merit is seen as a function of
abilities and effort. Abilities encompass talents and knowledge as
well as skills. One might think, for example, of the ability to
conceptualize or think critically, the ability to exert physical labor,
sociability, and so on. It is a bundle of culturally constructed factors
specific to a given society at a particular moment. Individual ability is
both innate and cultivated through education, so the elements of
ability are never independent of social context but are shaped by, for
example, inequality of opportunity.1 Effort, like ability, is constituted
of a bundle of contextually specific elements. These might include
the time expended in education or in pursuit of an avocation. One
can think of merit as a function that transforms individual ability and
effort into what is considered meritorious by any society in its
particular contextual setting.
Meritocracy—a system in which merit plays a paramount role in
determining the allocation of opportunities and rewards—can apply
to any notion of merit within the preceding broad definition. Just as
scholars in many societies have sought to define merit, the questions
that concern us here have long histories in China, India, and of
course elsewhere: whether, how, and why to create a society in
which merit is rewarded, in other words, about making meritocracy.
The term “meritocracy” itself, a compound of Latin and Greek
origins, obviously does not appear as such in the premodern
literatures of China and India, though, of course, for that matter it is
a mid-twentieth-century neologism that is not found in earlier
English-language writings either. But as several chapters in this work
point out, it would be a grave error to think that because the word
had not yet been coined, the ideas that it signifies were not already
circulating and evolving. Already in the fourth century bce, Mencius
was arguing that talented men should be praised and promoted
regardless of their birth, and two centuries earlier Confucius, even
while calling for the hierarchical social relationships rooted in the
family, had insisted that education should be open to all.
In the Indian tradition, identifying the earliest antecedents to
notions of meritocracy is a murkier task, but such antecedents can
nonetheless be found. Notions of differentiated merit are evident in
the early formation of the Brahmanical tradition, in the eighth to
fourth centuries bce. By the early centuries of the Common Era, the
notion that good government involves allocating roles such that
people can best use their own intrinsic capacities, albeit with a more
rigid sense of these intrinsic qualities, is found in the Arthashastra of
Kautilya.2
In contemporary discourse, the term “meritocracy” is most
commonly used in one of three interrelated senses: educational,
organizational (in particular political), and as a social system. That is,
the term is used to describe an educational system in which
opportunities are granted to students on the basis of merit, an
organizational system in which leaders are selected and promoted
on the basis of merit, and more broadly, a social system in which
social opportunities and rewards—including but not exclusively
occupational opportunities and rewards—are distributed on the basis
of merit.
One common instantiation of the second meaning is the political;
that is, meritocracy is used to describe a political system in which
leadership roles are assigned on the basis of merit. In this political
sense of the term, merit is often seen as encompassing not only
talent and effort but also moral virtues: the ability to resist
corrupting influences, a commitment to serving the community over
one’s own interests, and so on. Virtue, like ability and effort, is also
contextually specific. (One could argue that virtue is a talent or
ability like any other and therefore there is no need to complicate
the basic conceptualization.)
The third broad sense of the term, as a social system, can be
further subdivided into two more specific senses. The first is the
relatively uncontroversial ideal of equality of occupational
opportunity. The second is the less straightforward ideal that
economic rewards should be distributed according to merit.
“Economic meritocracy,” as we might label this strand of argument,
is more controversial because rewarding people on the basis of
natural talent is arbitrary from a moral point of view. One could
therefore argue that “economic meritocracy” is unfair even if it does
not reward people on the basis of family, caste, background, or
some other inherited trait. The chapters in this volume do not have
much to say about economic meritocracy; perhaps this reflects an
unconscious selection bias on our part as editors, or perhaps this
issue is so closely associated with modern societies as to make
historical comparison and philosophical exploration unhelpful.
The three broad meanings of meritocracy are connected in a
number of ways. In all three senses, meritocracy is often defined
“against” something else. It is most typically contrasted with other or
alternative systems in which opportunities are distributed on
ascriptive grounds. An educational system in which race or caste
determines one’s opportunities is not a meritocracy; a political
system in which rulers are selected on the basis of birth is not a
meritocracy; an occupational system in which people’s chances are
determined not by their potential or through their own efforts but by
inherited privilege is not a meritocracy.
Meritocracy in the political sense is often specifically contrasted
with democracy as a mechanism for political selection. Daniel Bell
(chapter 3 in this volume) offers a set of arguments for why the
former might be preferable over the latter: because high-level public
officials come to their position with political experience at lower
levels of government, they are less likely to make beginner’s
mistakes; because they do not need to worry about losing power in
the next election, they can take a long-term view, which is helpful
for such challenges as dealing with climate change; and because
they don’t have to waste time fundraising and giving similar
speeches over and over again, they can spend more time on
policymaking. Ashutosh Varshney (chapter 2 in this volume) shows
how, in the history of India, arguments that democracy may work
against the principles of meritocracy were raised and ultimately
rejected.
A second way in which the three definitions are interrelated has to
do with the implications of meritocracy for the deployment of talent
and ability. In theory, in any system that is able to define talent and
ability appropriately and to implement an effective mechanism for
the identification, selection, and promotion of talent and ability, it
follows logically that available talent is optimally deployed. This is
the shared implication of all three senses of the term “meritocracy.”
A society that can truly implement meritocratic educational,
organizational (including political), and social systems would be a
society in which all talent was optimally deployed, at least according
to its own definitions of talent.
Third, issues of measurement are relevant to all three senses of
the term. There is a long history of debate, in China, India, and
elsewhere, about what should be incorporated into the measures of
merit. However a society chooses to define talent, effort, or virtue,
in practice the implementation of meritocracy is limited by what can
be measured or approximated. It is here that many of the practical
impediments to making meritocracy arise.
Fourth, arguments about meritocracy are always politically
interested arguments. Proponents of meritocracy in the educational
or occupational sense can come from both positions of exclusion and
positions of privilege. Likewise, the strengths of political meritocracy
can be used as a rhetorical tool both in support of and against
existing political arrangements, meritocratic or otherwise.
 Why Meritocracy Matters
Broadly, our chapters suggest two transsocietal and transhistorical
reasons why people think that meritocracy matters, that is, why
society should be organized along meritocratic lines. We can label
these efficiency reasons and ethical reasons.
The effective cultivation and deployment of talent and the
implementation of good government and policy are often thought to
be critical factors for successful economic growth (though as far as
we know, there has been little empirical testing of this conventional
wisdom). So, meritocracy is widely considered important to China
and to India because of its implications for economic growth and
other associated positive outcomes, such as poverty reduction. At
this time, there are hundreds of millions of people in China and India
whose opportunities are restricted by systems of inequity produced
by history, as well as the inadvertent result of more recent, well-
intentioned policies with deleterious side effects. When given the
opportunity, women typically perform as well as men across a range
of educational and occupational measures, villagers as well as city
dwellers, and students at nonelite colleges as well as students at
elite schools. But these groups are not always given that
opportunity, and this is widely seen as having a negative impact on
the economy. Turning to the political, in China and India, as
elsewhere, promoting good governance by selecting worthy and
talented people to serve also remains a work in progress. Poor
operationalization of merit in the political system may contribute to
lower growth and greater inequality. A system in which rewards are
seen as accruing disproportionately to the few, selected on criteria
that appear arbitrary, and cementing status quo hierarchies, may
also generate social discontent. This in turn could have
consequences for social and political stability.
In the economic realm, the supposed advantages of meritocracy
are often contrasted with one specific alternative system for
allocating opportunities, that is, privilege, which can be hereditary,
socioeconomic, cultural, racial, or some combination. As we noted
previously, in the political realm, meritocracy is also often contrasted
to one specific alternative: democracy. Bell points out (although it is
not central to his argument) that arguments about efficiency can
actually be used in support of (and indeed against) either system.
The dichotomy between merit and privilege or between merit and
democratic selection is often overstated; the two poles are linked in
practice in complex ways.
Many arguments in support of meritocracy as against privilege or
other forms of selection are founded on arguments not about
efficiency but about ethics. They are not about how to build a
successful society but about how to build a good society. Arguments
that draw a contrast between merit and privilege are often implicitly
or explicitly ethical arguments about fairness.
In a system where privilege determines opportunity, limiting the
impact of privilege by implementing meritocracy often means
expanding diversity. Arguments about diversity recur in different
contexts. One argument, familiar to Americans, is that diversity is
desirable as a way to redress past injustice. Then there is the idea
that diversity is desirable as a way to ensure equality of opportunity.
Both these arguments are ethical arguments, but they are slightly
different: the first is oriented to the past, the second to the present.
A third argument for diversity is instrumental and therefore actually
belongs to the category of efficiency reasons. That is, promoting
more diverse representation in the leadership of a government, or a
corporation, or any other organization will make that organization
more effective because it will incorporate a wider range of views and
permit a fuller understanding of the issues.

Barriers to Meritocracy: Latent and Engineered

Contemporary America is far from the first or only society to have
explored the advantages of meritocracy. Efficiency and ethical
arguments have been made in other contexts. Nor is the idea that
making meritocracy is difficult unique to contemporary America.
Much of the history of meritocracy in these different contexts is a
story of the challenges to it. We can think about the difficulties of
making meritocracy in two broad categories: latent and deliberate
(or engineered).
By latent difficulties we refer to aspects of a society that
undermine efforts to recognize merit. In India, the most systemic
latent obstacle to meritocracy is the system of varnas or castes
which evolved from Vedic times (1500–500 bce) on the Indo-Gangetic
plain. Historians debate the extent to which the more rigid caste
system of twentieth-century India was produced by the colonial
period rather than surviving as a legacy from an earlier period.3 But
the consequences of the system for meritocracy in premodern as
well as modern times are in little doubt. Although merit could
theoretically be rewarded by new opportunities within the limits of
one’s caste, and in a very small number of cases castes moved up or
down the hierarchy of castes in toto, by the colonial period castes
were ordered such that opportunities based on merit were chiefly
confined within caste boundaries. This limitation persists in different
forms today. Babu, Prasad, and Kapur (chapter 12 in this volume)
point out that long-standing emphases on the strictures of caste
have led to a mindset that is an insidious latent barrier to
meritocracy in India. Subramanian (chapter 8 in this volume) refers
to a similar phenomenon when she describes an “upper class claim
to merit,” in which members of the elite confuse an actual
“aristocracy of privilege” for an imagined “aristocracy of talent.” The
relationship between caste membership and advancement is
complex, of course. In fact, membership in a caste might even be an
enabler of political office, regardless of merit, due to caste members
voting en bloc. However, such politicization of caste has not
translated into economic prowess. Iyer et al. show that, as recently
as 2005, scheduled castes and scheduled tribes remained
significantly underrepresented (relative to their share in the
population) in the ownership of private enterprises.4
In contemporary China, the divide between urban and rural is
perhaps the closest analog to the caste system in premodern and
modern India (the divide between the majority Han ethnicity and the
minority ethnicities might be a close second). Despite remarkable
poverty-reduction efforts, rural people today still have inferior access
to educational and occupational opportunities and are
underrepresented in political leadership. Historical patterns were
reinforced by policy choices made in the Maoist era. Thus geographic
contingency can represent another kind of latent barrier to
meritocracy. Though it is hard to imagine any political leader today
proposing active policies to repress the opportunities of rural people,
rural talent remains disadvantaged. So, this is another latent
difficulty in implementing meritocracy.
A different kind of challenge to meritocracy takes the form of
deliberate or engineered interference in otherwise meritocratic
selection systems to achieve other goals. Even a society that aspires
to meritocratic selection and with a meritocratic system in place,
regardless of how merit is defined, may decide that pure meritocratic
selection is not ideal and interfere with selection in some way.
Various tools are available to interfere with meritocratic systems; US
affirmative action policies offer a well-known example.
Affirmative action belongs to a broader category of interference
that can be described as compensatory discrimination.
Compensatory discrimination entails a compromise in the service of
goals other than meritocracy through some form of interference. By
giving certain groups advantages, its proponents argue, affirmative
action works to create equality of opportunity, overcoming systemic
disadvantages or legacies of history that make it more difficult for
members of those groups to advance. Opponents of affirmative
action in the United States typically argue that compensatory
discrimination produces unmeritocratic outcomes.5 Policymakers in
many societies—including China historically and India today—have
observed that policies intended to promote meritocracy by
countering historically generated structures are necessarily
unmeritocratic in their short-term consequences. One could see
compensatory discrimination as unmeritocratic in the short run, in
the service of meritocracy in the longer run.
 Affirmative action is not unique to the United States, nor is it new.
China has a long history of debates about interference, going back a
millennium to the Song dynasty examination system. From the
eleventh century, regional quotas were a part of the examination
selection system, with the goal of ensuring that scholars from poorer
regions and regions with a weaker tradition of scholarship would
have a better chance of being identified. Of course, official selection
has a political dimension as well. Efforts to cast a wide net may also
be a tool of legitimization, a way of encouraging elites in remote
areas to buy in to the existing system and thereby promoting
political stability.
Regional quotas in late imperial China have a contemporary
analog in the awarding of extra points on the gaokao, the national
university entrance examination. Examination takers receive extra
points for such factors as ethnic minority status. The situation is
complicated by admissions quotas that the state assigns to every
institution of higher education, a legacy from the planned economy
of the Maoist era. Poorer provinces in western China, where most
ethnic minorities reside, receive relatively favorable admissions
quotas. Although this is a form of affirmative action, the justification
behind it is not compensatory discrimination but rather a form of
regional development assistance. Furthermore, schools in wealthier
cities like Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai also give special admissions
access to local residents. Thus affirmative action and local
protectionism coexist in the modern system. Not surprisingly, plans
to eliminate any protections produce a backlash from those who
benefit from them.
In present-day India, the major form of interference in
meritocracy is the use of caste as a filter in the allocation of scarce
education resources and public-sector jobs. The “seats” are highly
coveted—admission rates are typically 2 percent of applications for
top management institutes; 0.7 percent for the prestigious Indian
Institutes of Technology (IITs); and 0.2 percent for the elite civil
service. In the IITs, 50 percent of seats are now allocated on the
basis of caste quotas, a figure that has risen dramatically in recent
decades. Whatever benefits might accrue to the beneficiaries of
reservations—and Deshpande (chapter 7 in this volume) suggests
these are considerable—these policies also perpetuate the cognitive
separation described by Babu et al. between those who benefit from
caste-allocated seats and the rest.
Scholars and policymakers alike have noticed that the line
between merit and privilege is drawn contextually. The contrast
between ascriptive and meritocratic approaches is often overstated;
Sheth and Zhang (chapter 4 in this volume) demonstrate that even
premodern states generally sought to be meritocratic in at least
some dimensions. One compromise that turns out to be quite
common in premodern societies is the use of political loyalty as a
criterion for promotion and advancement in government service. In
this volume, the issue is raised in the chapters on premodern India,
but many societies have valued both merit and loyalty. The reason is
obvious: no ruler would want to employ even the most talented and
able official unless they were confident that the official would not
seek to overthrow them. Loyalty to the ruler, as detailed in Guha
(chapter 5 in this volume), plays a similar functional role to virtue as
described by Bell, suggesting further the challenges of a universal
definition of merit.
Loyalty remains a salient issue today, as demonstrated by the
turnover in leadership of the federal bureaucracy after every US
presidential election. It might seem that the issue has changed from
one of actual loyalty to the person of the leader to one of ideological
affinity. But from our vantage point in the United States in 2021,
genuine loyalty to the person of the leader also appears to be a
factor in the selection of the bureaucracy.
Historical chapters also suggest a societal predilection for
continuity in opportunities for government service. In some contexts,
this led to efforts to identify the best talent for certain positions not
on an individual but on a continual basis beyond a single person or a
single generation. In both China and India, this led to clusters of
families monopolizing certain government positions or functional
areas over generations.
The distinction between latent and engineered barriers to
meritocracy is not hard and fast. Today’s latent barriers might well
be the cumulative result of past engineering attempts. For example,
the British relied on certain higher castes to support their divide-and-
rule philosophy in colonial India, thus exacerbating caste divisions
whose foundations significantly predate British rule.

Measurement and Testing in Meritocracy

Meritocracy presupposes a system of measurement. We measure
what we can, not necessarily what we should. There are limits
imposed by our understanding of how and what to measure and by
the technology available to translate this understanding into practice.
The choice of measures to evaluate merit is in part a function of
societal complexity. In a relatively simple economy, where most
production of goods and services is elementary and where education
is similarly straightforward, the appropriate measures of the talent
needed to execute these tasks would not be difficult to identify. But
in more complex societies, with complex outputs including
intellectual production, and where teams work together, how best to
measure merit becomes much less clear. In more complex societies
such as those discussed in this book, the measurement of merit is
likewise complex, with many moving parts.
Cost is often a factor in measurement, both at the macro- and
micro-level. Holding national-level examinations is expensive;
reviewing a job candidate’s file takes effort. Many societies have
experimented with shortcuts to reduce the cost of measurement—
finding ways to measure ability and effort that are cheaper, faster,
and easier. In debates about how to make meritocracy, such efforts
are often identified both as solutions and as barriers to the goal of
establishing meritocracy.
As Puett (chapter 1 in this volume) reminds us, Mencius held that
any attempt to find objective standards against which to judge
individuals for advancement was bound to fail—it would create self-
interested individuals who cared little for society. Any measurement
system can be manipulated by those who understand it best,
including those who have succeeded in ascending to the top under
Another random document with
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between them, Elphinstone rose to depart, but before he went, he
touched Swift on the shoulder with his sword, and dropped a hint
that he would expect to receive satisfaction next morning on the
Links. Next day, accordingly, the two gentlemen met at eleven in the
forenoon in that comparatively public place (as it now appears), and
fought a single combat with swords, which ended in Swift receiving a
mortal wound in the breast.
Elphinstone was indicted for this act before the High Court of
Justiciary; but the case was never brought forward, and the young
man died without molestation at Leith three years after.

The merit of the invention of that noble 1730.

instrument, the Reflecting Telescope, is
allowed to rest with David Gregory, a native of Scotland, although
that of first completing one (in 1671) is due to the illustrious Newton.
It was thought very desirable by Sir Isaac to substitute glass for
metallic reflectors; but fifty years elapsed without the idea being
realised, when at length, about this date, a very young Edinburgh
artist, named James Short, ‘executed no fewer than six reflecting
telescopes with glass specula, three of which were fifteen inches, and
three nine inches in focal length,’ to which Professor Maclaurin gave
his approbation, though ultimately their light was found fainter than
was deemed necessary.
Two years afterwards, when Short had only attained the age of
twenty-two, he began to enter into competition with the English
makers of reflecting telescopes, but without attempting to make
specula of glass. ‘To such perfection did he carry the art of grinding
and polishing metallic specula, and of giving them the true parabolic
figure, that, with a telescope of fifteen inches in focal length, he and
Mr Bayne, Professor of Law in the University of Edinburgh, read the
Philosophical Transactions at the distance of five hundred feet, and
several times, particularly on the 24th of November and the 7th of
December 1734, they saw the five satellites of Saturn together, an
achievement beyond the reach of Hadley’s six-feet telescope.’
This ingenious man, attaining some celebrity for the making of
reflecting telescopes, was induced, in 1742, to settle in London,
where for a number of years he continued to use his remarkable
talents in this way, occasionally furnishing 1730.
instruments at high prices to royal
personages throughout Europe.[704]

One William Muir, brother of two men Oct. 26.

who had recently been hanged at Ayr for
theft, was this day tried before a jury, for housebreaking, by the Lord
Provost of Edinburgh, acting as ‘High Sheriff within burgh.’ The man
was condemned to death, and the sentence was duly executed on the
ensuing 2d of December, he dying penitent.[705]
It seems strange to us, but about this time the condemnation of
criminals to capital punishment by sheriffs of counties, and by the
chief-magistrate of Edinburgh, was by no means infrequent, being
entirely in accordance with the statutory arrangements of the
country. Nay more, great territorial lords, especially in the
Highlands, still acted upon their ancient privileges of pit and gallows.
It is related that the Duke of Athole one day received at Blair an
application from his baron-bailie for pardon to a man whom he had
condemned to be hanged for theft, but who was a person of such
merits otherwise that it seemed a pity to put justice in force against
him. The Lord President Forbes, who had stopped to dine with his
Grace in the course of a journey to Edinburgh, expressed his surprise
that the power of pardoning a condemned criminal should be
attributed to any person but the king. ‘Since I have the power of
punishing,’ said the duke, ‘it is but right that I should have the power
of pardoning.’ Then, calling a servant, he quietly added: ‘Send an
express to Logierait, and order Donald Stewart, presently under
sentence, to be set at liberty.’[706]

We are now arrived at a time which seems to mark very decidedly

a transition in Scotland from poverty to growing wealth, from the
puritanic manners of the seventeenth century to the semi-licence and
ease of the eighteenth, from narrow to liberal education, and
consequently from restricted to expanded views. It may, therefore, be
proper here to introduce a few general observations.
Although, only a few years back, we find Wodrow speaking of the
general poverty, it is remarkable that, after this time, complaints on
that point are not heard in almost any quarter. The influx of
commercial prosperity at Glasgow had now 1730.
fairly set in, and the linen manufacture and
other branches of industry begin to be a good deal spoken of.
Agricultural improvements and the decoration of the country by
wood had now been commenced. There was great chafing under the
taxation introduced after the Union, and smuggling was popular, and
the revenue-officers were detested; yet the people had become able
to endure the deductions made from their income. Thus did matters
go on during the time between 1725 and 1745, making a slow but
sensible advance—nothing like what took place after the question of
the dynasty had been settled at Culloden, but yet such as to very
considerably affect the condition of the people. Much of this was
owing to the pacific policy of Sir Robert Walpole, to whom, with all
his faults, the British people certainly owe more than to any minister
before Sir Robert Peel.
If we wish to realise the manners before this period, we must think
of the Scotch as a people living in a part of Britain remote from the
centre—peninsulated and off at a side—enjoying little intercourse
with strangers; but, above all, as a people on whom the theology of
the Puritans, with all their peculiar views regarding the forms of
religion and the arrangements of a church, had taken a powerful
hold. Down to 1730, all respectable persons in Scotland, with but the
slightest exceptions, maintained a strictly evangelical creed, went
regularly to church, and kept up daily family-worship. Nay, it had
become a custom that every house should contain a small closet built
on purpose, to which the head of the family could retire at stated
times for his personal or private devotions, which were usually of a
protracted kind, and often accompanied by great motions and
groanings, expressive of an intense sense of human worthlessness
without the divine favour. On Sunday, the whole family, having first
gathered for prayers in the parlour, proceeded at ten to church. At
half-past twelve, they came home for a light dinner of cold viands
(none being cooked on this sacred day), to return at two for an
afternoon service of about two hours. The remainder of the day was
devoted to private devotions, catechising of children, and the reading
of pious books, excepting a space of time set aside for supper, which
in many families was a comfortable meal, and an occasion, the only
one during the day, when a little cheerful conversation was indulged
in. Invariably, the day was closed with a repetition of family prayers.
It was customary for serious people to draw up a written paper, in
which they formally devoted themselves to 1730.
the service of God—a sort of personal
covenant with their Maker—and to renew this each year at the time
of the celebration of the communion by a fresh signature with the
date. The subscriber expressed his entire satisfaction with the
scheme of Christian salvation, avowed his willingness to take the
Lord to be his all-sufficient portion, and to be resigned to his will and
providence in all things. He also expressed his resolution to be
mortified to the world, and to engage heartily and steadfastly
persevere in the performance of all religious duties. An earnest
prayer for the divine help usually closed this document.
As all were trained to look up to the Deity with awe and terror, so,
with the same feelings, were children accustomed to look up to their
parents, and servants to their masters. Amongst the upper classes,
the head of the family was for the most part an awful personage, who
sat in a special chair by the fireside, and at the head of the table, with
his hat on, often served at meals with special dishes, which no one
else, not even guests, partook of. In all the arrangements of the
house, his convenience and tastes were primarily studied. His
children approached him with fear, and never spoke with any
freedom before him. At meals, the lady of the house helped every one
as she herself might choose. The dishes were at once ill-cooked and
ill-served. It was thought unmeet for man that he should be nice
about food. Nicety and love of rich feeding were understood to be
hateful peculiarities of the English, and unworthy of the people who
had been so much more favoured by God in a knowledge of matters
of higher concern.
There was, nevertheless, a great amount of hospitality. And here it
is to be observed, that the poverty of those old times had less effect
on the entertainments of the higher classes than might have been
expected. What helped the gentlefolks in this respect, was the custom
of receiving considerable payments from their tenants in kind. This
enabled them to indulge in a rude abundance at home, while their
means of living in a town-house, or in an inn while travelling, was
probably very limited. We must further remember the abundance of
game in Scotland, how every moor teemed with grouse and black-
cock, and every lake and river with fish. These furnished large
supplies for the table of the laird, both in Lowlands and Highlands;
and I feel convinced that the miserable picture drawn by a modern
historian of the way of living among the northern chiefs is untrue to a
large extent, mainly by his failure to take 1730.
such resources into account.
A lady, born in 1714, who has left a valuable set of reminiscences of
her early days, lays great stress on the home-staying life of the
Scottish gentry. She says that this result of their narrow
circumstances kept their minds in a contracted state, and caused
them to regard all manners and habits different from their own with
prejudice. The adult had few intelligent books to read; neither did
journals then exist to give them a knowledge of public affairs. The
children, kept at a distance by their parents, lived much amongst
themselves or with underlings, and grew up with little of either
knowledge or refinement. Restrained within a narrow social circle,
they often contracted improper marriages. It was not thought
necessary in those days that young ladies should acquire a sound
knowledge of even their own language, much less of French, German,
or Italian; nor were many of them taught music or any other refined
accomplishment. ‘The chief thing required was to hear them psalms
and long catechisms, in which they were employed an hour or more
every day, and almost the whole day on Sunday. They were allowed
to run about and amuse themselves in the way they choosed, even to
the age of woman, at which time they were generally sent to
Edinburgh for a winter or two, to learn to dress themselves, and to
dance, and see a little of the world. The world was only to be seen at
church, at marriages, burials, and baptisms.... When in the country,
their employment was in coloured work, beds, tapestry, and other
pieces of furniture; imitations of fruits and flowers, with very little
taste. If they read any, it was either books of devotion or long
romances, and sometimes both.’
Previous to this time, the universal dress of the middle classes was
of plain country cloth, much of it what was called hodden gray—that
is, cloth spun at home from the undyed wool. Gentlemen of figure
wore English or foreign cloth, and their clothes were costly in
comparison with other articles. We find, for instance, a gentleman at
his marriage, in 1711, paying £340 Scots for two suits, a night-gown,
and a suit to his servant. Linen being everywhere made at home—the
spinning executed by the servants during the long winter evenings,
and the weaving by the village webster—there was a general
abundance of napery and of under-clothing. Holland, being about six
shillings an ell, was worn only by men of refinement. ‘I remember,’
says the lady aforesaid, ‘in the ‘30 or ‘31, of a ball where it was agreed
that the company should be dressed in 1730.
nothing but what was manufactured in the
country. My sisters were as well dressed as any, and their gowns
were striped linen at 2s. 6d. per yard. Their heads and ruffles were of
Paisley muslins, at 4s. 6d., with fourpenny edging from Hamilton; all
of them the finest that could be had.... At the time I mention, hoops
were constantly worn four and a half yards wide, which required
much silk to cover them; and gold and silver were much used for
trimming, never less than three rows round the petticoat; so that,
though the silk was slight, the price was increased by the trimming.
Then the heads were all dressed in laces from Flanders; no blondes
or course-edging used: the price of these was high, but two suits
would serve for life; they were not renewed but at marriage, or some
great event. Who could not afford these wore fringes of thread.’ In
those days, the ladies went to church, and appeared on other public
occasions, in full dress. A row of them so rigged out, taking a place in
the procession at the opening of the General Assembly, used to be
spoken of by old people as a fine show. When a lady appeared in
undress on the streets of Edinburgh, she generally wore a mask,
which, however, seems to have been regarded as simply an
equivalent for the veil of modern times.
One marked peculiarity of old times, was the union of fine parade
and elegant dressing with vulgarity of thought, speech, and act. The
seemliness and delicacy observed now-a-days regarding both
marriages and births were unknown long ago. We have seen how a
bridal in high life was conducted in the reign of Queen Anne.[707] Let
us now observe the ceremonials connected with a birth at the same
period. ‘On the fourth week after the lady’s delivery, she is set on her
bed on a low footstool; the bed covered with some neat piece of
sewed work or white sattin, with three pillows at her back covered
with the same; she in full dress with a lappet head-dress and a fan in
her hand. Having informed her acquaintance what day she is to see
company, they all come and pay their respects to her, standing, or
walking a little through the room (for there’s no chairs). They drink a
glass of wine and eat a bit of cake, and then give place to others.
Towards the end of the week, all the friends are asked to what was
called the Cummers’ Feast.[708] This was a supper where every
gentleman brought a pint of wine to be drunk by him and his wife.
The supper was a ham at the head, and a 1730.
pyramid of fowl at the bottom. This dish
consisted of four or five ducks at bottom, hens above, and partridges
at top. There was an eating posset in the middle of the table, with
dried fruits and sweetmeats at the sides. When they had finished
their supper, the meat was removed, and in a moment everybody
flies to the sweetmeats to pocket them. Upon which a scramble
ensued; chairs overturned, and everything on the table; wrestling
and pulling at one another with the utmost noise. When all was
quiet, they went to the stoups (for there were no bottles), of which
the women had a good share; for though it was a disgrace to be seen
drunk, yet it was none to be a little intoxicat in good company.’
Any one who has observed the conduct of stiff people, when on
special occasions they break out from their reserve, will have no
difficulty in reconciling such childish frolics with the general
sombreness of old Scottish life.
It is to be observed that, while puritanic rigour was characteristic
of the great bulk of society, there had been from the Restoration a
minority of a more indulgent complexion. These were generally
persons of rank, and adherents of Episcopacy and the House of
Stuart. Such tendency as there was in the country to music, to
theatricals, to elegant literature, resided with this party almost
exclusively. After the long dark interval which ensued upon the death
of Drummond, Sir George Mackenzie, the ‘persecutor,’ was the first
to attempt the cultivation of the belles-lettres in Scotland. Dr Pitcairn
was the centre of a small circle of wits who, a little later, devoted
themselves to the Muses, but who composed exclusively in Latin.
When Addison, Steele, Pope, and Swift were conferring Augustine
glories on the reign of Anne in England, there was scarcely a single
writer of polite English in Scotland; but under George I., we find
Ramsay tuning his rustic reed, and making himself known even in
the south, notwithstanding the peculiarity of his language. These
men were all of them unsympathetic with the old church Calvinism
of their native country—as, indeed, have been nearly all the eminent
cultivators of letters in Scotland down to the present time. We learn
that copies of the Tatler and Spectator found their way into
Scotland; and we hear not only of gentlemen, but of clergymen
reading them. Allan Ramsay lent out the plays of Congreve and
Farquhar at his shop in Edinburgh. Periodical amateur concerts were
commenced, as we have seen, as early as 1717. The Easy Club—to
which Ramsay belonged—and other social 1730.
fraternities of the same kind, were at the
same time enjoying their occasional convivialities in Edinburgh. A
small miscellany of verse, published in Edinburgh in 1720, makes us
aware that there were then residing there several young aspirants to
the laurel, including two who have since obtained places in the roll of
the British poets—namely, Thomson and Mallet—and also Mr Henry
Home of Kames, and Mr Joseph Mitchell: moreover, we gather from
this little volume, that there was in Edinburgh a ‘Fair Intellectual
Club,’ an association, we must presume, of young ladies who were
disposed to cultivate a taste for the belles-lettres. About this time, the
tea-table began to be a point of reunion for the upper classes. At four
in the afternoon, the gentlemen and ladies would assemble round a
multitude of small china cups, each recognisable by the number of
the little silver spoon connected with it, and from these the lady of
the house would dispense an almost endless series of libations, while
lively chat and gossip went briskly on, but it is to be feared, in most
circles, little conversation of what would now be called an intellectual
cast. On these occasions, the singing of a Scottish song to an
accompaniment on the spinet was considered a graceful
accomplishment; and certainly no superior treat was to be had.
 Lady playing on Spinet, with Violoncello Accompaniment.—From
a volume entitled Music for Tea-table Miscellany, published by
Allan Ramsay.

Two things at this period told powerfully in introducing new ideas

and politer manners: first, the constant going and coming of sixty-
one men of importance between their own 1730.
country and London in attendance on
parliament; and second, the introduction of a number of English
people as residents or visitors into the country, in connection with
the army, the excise and customs, and the management of the
forfeited estates. This intercourse irresistibly led to greater
cleanliness, to a demand for better house accommodation, and to at
once greater ease and greater propriety of manners. The minority of
the tasteful and the gay being so far reinforced, assemblies for
dancing, and even in a modest way theatricals, were no longer to be
repressed. The change thus effected was by and by confirmed, in
consequence of young men of family getting into the custom of
travelling for a year or two on the continent before settling at their
professions or in the management of their affairs at home. This led,
too, to a somewhat incongruous ingrafting of French politeness on
the homely manners and speech of the general flock of ladies and
gentlemen. Reverting to the matter of house accommodation, it may
be remarked that a floor of three or four rooms and a kitchen was
then considered a mansion for a gentleman or superior merchant in
Edinburgh. We ought not to be too much startled at the idea of a lady
receiving gentlemen along with ladies in her bedroom, when we
reflect that there were then few rooms which had not beds in them,
either openly or behind a screen. It is a significant fact that, in 1745,
there was in Inverness only one house which contained a room
without a bed—namely, that in which Prince Charles took up his
lodgings.
As a consequence of the narrowness of house accommodation in
those days, taverns were much more used than they are now. A
physician or advocate in high practice was to be consulted at his
tavern, and the habits of each important practitioner in this regard
were studied, and became widely known. Gentlemen met in tavern
clubs each evening for conversation, without much expense, a
shilling’s reckoning being thought high—more generally, it was the
half of that sum. ‘In some of these clubs they played at backgammon
or catch-honours for a penny the game.’ At the consultations of
lawyers, the liquor was sherry, brought in mutchkin stoups, and paid
for by the employer. ‘It was incredible the quantity that was drunk
sometimes on those occasions.’ Politicians met in taverns to discuss
the affairs of state. One situated in the High Street, kept by Patrick
Steil, was the resort of a number of the patriots who urged on the Act
of Security and resisted the Union; and the phrase, Pate Steil’s
Parliament, occasionally appears in the 1730.
correspondence of the time. It was in the
same place, as we have seen, that the weekly concert was
commenced. In the freer days which ensued upon this time, it was
not thought derogatory to ladies of good rank that they should
occasionally join oyster-parties in these places of resort.
Miss Mure, in her invaluable memoir, remarks on the change
which took place in her youth in the religious sentiments of the
people. A dread of the Deity, and a fear of hell and of the power of
the devil, she cites as the predominant feelings of religious people in
the age succeeding the Revolution. It was thought a mark of atheistic
tendencies to doubt witchcraft, or the reality of apparitions, or the
occasional vaticinative character of dreams. When the generation of
the Revolution was beginning to pass away, the deep convictions as
well as the polemical spirit, of the seventeenth century gave place to
an easier and a gentler faith. There was no such thing as scepticism,
except in the greatest obscurity; but a number of favourite preachers
began to place Christianity in an amiable light before their
congregations. ‘We were bid,’ says Miss Mure, ‘to draw our
knowledge of God from his works, the chief of which is the soul of a
good man; then judge if we have cause to fear.... Whoever would
please God must resemble him in goodness and benevolence.... The
Christian religion was taught as the purest rule of morals; the belief
of a particular providence and of a future state as a support in every
situation. The distresses of individuals were necessary for exercising
the good affections of others, and the state of suffering the post of
honour.’ At the same time, dread of parents also melted away. ‘The
fathers would use their sons with such freedom, that they should be
their first friend; and the mothers would allow of no intimacies but
with themselves. For their girls the utmost care was taken that fear of
no kind should enslave the mind; nurses were turned off who would
tell the young of ghosts and witches. The old ministers were ridiculed
who preached up hell and damnation; the mind was to be influenced
by gentle and generous motives alone.’
A country gentleman, writing in 1729, remarks the increase in the
expense of housekeeping which he had seen going on during the past
twenty years. While deeming it indisputable that Edinburgh was now
less populous than before the Union, ‘yet I am informed,’ says he,
‘there is a greater consumption since, than before the Union, of all
provisions, especially fleshes and wheatbread. The butcher owns he
now kills three of every species of cattle for 1730.
every one he killed before the Union.’
Where formerly he had been accustomed to see ‘two or three
substantial dishes of beef, mutton, and fowl, garnished with their
own wholesome gravy,’ he now saw ‘several services of little
expensive ashets, with English pickles, yea Indian mangoes, and
catch-up or anchovy sauces.’ Where there used to be the quart stoup
of ale from the barrel, there was now bottled ale for a first service,
and claret to help out the second, or else ‘a snaker of rack or brandy
punch.’ Tea in the morning and tea in the evening had now become
established. There were more livery-servants, and better dressed,
and more horses, than formerly. French and Italian silks for the
ladies, and English broadcloth for the gentlemen, were more and
more supplanting the plain home-stuffs of former days.[709] This
writer was full of fears as to the warrantableness of this superior style
of living, but his report of the fact is not the less valuable.

It will be remembered that the Bank of 1731. July.

Scotland, soon after its institution in 1696,
settled branches at Glasgow, Aberdeen, Montrose, and Dundee, all of
which proving unsuccessful, were speedily withdrawn. Since then, no
new similar movement had been made; neither had a native bank
arisen in any of those towns. But now, when the country seemed to
be making some decided advances in industry and wealth, the Bank
resolved upon a new attempt, and set up branches in Glasgow,
Aberdeen, Dundee, and Berwick. It was found, however, that the
effort was yet premature, and, after two years’ trial, these branches
were all recalled.[710]
It is to be observed that Glasgow, though yet unable to support a
branch of a public bank, was not inexperienced in banking
accommodation. The business was carried on here, as it had long ago
been in Edinburgh, by private traders, and in intimate connection
with other business. An advertisement published in the newspapers
in July 1730 by James Blair, merchant, at the head of the Saltmarket
in Glasgow, makes us aware that at his shop there, ‘all persons who
have occasion to buy or sell bills of exchange, or want money to
borrow, or have money to lend on interest, or have any sort of goods
to sell, or want to buy any kind of goods, or who want to buy sugar-
house notes or other good bills, or desire to have such notes or bills
discounted, or who want to have policies 1731.
signed, or incline to underwrite policies in
ships or goods, may deliver their commands.’[711]

The latter part of the year 1730 and Oct.

earlier part of 1731 were made memorable
in England by the ‘Malicious Society of Undertakers.’ An inoffensive
farmer or a merchant would receive a letter threatening the
conflagration of his house unless he should deposit six or eight
guineas under his door before some assigned time. The system is
said to have begun at Bristol, where the house of a Mr Packer was
actually set fire to and consumed. When a panic had spread, many
ruined gamblers and others adopted the practice, in recklessness, or
with a view to gain; but the chief practitioners appear to have been
ruffians of the lower classes, as the letters were generally very ill-
spelt and ill-written.
In the autumn of 1731, the system spread to Scotland, beginning in
Lanarkshire. According to Mr Wodrow, the parishes of Lesmahago
and Strathaven were thrown into great alarm by a number of
anonymous letters being dropped at night, or thrown into houses,
threatening fire-raising unless contributions were made in money.
Mr Aiton of Walseley, a justice of peace, was ordered to bring fifty
guineas to the Cross-boat at Lanark; otherwise his house would be
burnt. He went to the place, but found no one waiting. At the same
time, there were rumours of strangers being seen on the moors. So
great was the consternation, that parties of soldiers were brought to
the district, but without discovering any person that seemed liable to
suspicion.[712]

James Erskine of Grange, brother of the 1732. Jan. 22.

attainted Earl of Mar, and who had been a
judge of the Court of Session since 1707, was fitted with a wife of
irregular habits and violent temper, the daughter of the murderer
Chiesley of Dalry.[713] After agreeing, in 1730, to live upon a separate
maintenance, she continued to persecute her husband in a personal
and indecent manner, and further vented some threats as to her
power of exposing him to the ministry for dangerous sentiments. The
woman was scarcely mad enough to justify restraint, and, though it
had been otherwise, there were in those days no asylums to which
she could have been consigned. In these circumstances, the husband
felt himself at liberty in conscience—pious man as he notedly was—to
have his wife spirited away by night from her lodgings in Edinburgh,
hurried by night-journeys to Loch Hourn on 1732.
the West Highland coast, and thence
transported to the lonely island of Heskir, and put under the care of a
peasant-farmer, subject to Sir Alexander Macdonald of Sleat. After
two years, she was taken to the still more remote island of St Kilda,
and there kept amongst a poor and illiterate people, though not
without the comforts of life, for seven years more. It was not till 1740
that any friends of hers knew where she was. A prosecution of the
husband being then threatened, the lady was taken to a place more
agreeable to her, where she soon after died.
Lord Grange was one of those singular men who contrive to
cherish and act out the most intense religious convictions, to appear
as zealous leaders in church judicatories, and stand as shining lights
before the world, while yet tainted with the most atrocious secret
vices. Being animated with an extreme hatred of Sir Robert Walpole,
he was tempted, in 1734, to give up his seat on the bench, in order
that he might be able to go into parliament and assist in hunting
down the minister. Returned for Clackmannanshire, he did make his
appearance in the House of Commons, fully believing that he should
ere long be secretary of state for Scotland under a new ministry. It
unluckily happened that one of the first opportunities he obtained
for making a display of oratory was on the bill that was introduced
for doing away with the statutes against witchcraft.[714] Erskine was
too faithful a Presbyterian of the old type to abandon a code of beliefs
that seemed fully supported by Scripture. He rose, and delivered
himself of a pious speech on the reality of necromantic arts, and the
necessity of maintaining the defences against them. Sir Robert is said
to have felt convinced from that moment, that he had not much to
fear from the new member for Clackmannanshire.
Disappointed, impoverished, out of reverence with old friends,
perhaps somewhat galled in conscience, Erskine ere long retired in a
great measure from the world. For some years before his death in
1754, he is said to have lived principally in a coffee-house in the
Haymarket, as all but the husband of its mistress; certainly a most
lame and impotent conclusion for one who had made such a figure in
political life, and passed as such a ‘professor,’ in his native country.

On a stormy night in this month, Colonel Feb.

Francis Charteris 1732.
died at his seat of
Stonyhill, near Musselburgh. The pencil of Hogarth, which
represents him as the old profligate gentleman in the first print of
the Harlot’s Progress, has given historical importance to this
extraordinary man. Descended from an old family of very moderate
fortune in Dumfriesshire—Charteris of Amisfield—he acquired an
enormous fortune by gambling and usury, and thus was enabled to
indulge in his favourite vices on a scale which might be called
magnificent. A single worthy trait has never yet been adduced to
redeem the character of Charteris, though it is highly probable that,
in some particulars, that character has been exaggerated by popular
rumour.[715]
A contemporary assures us, that the fortune of Charteris amounted
to the then enormous sum of fourteen thousand a year; of which ten
thousand was left to his grandson, Francis, second son of the Earl of
Wemyss.
‘Upon his death-bed,’ says the same writer, ‘he was exceedingly
anxious to know if there were any such thing as hell; and said, were
he assured there was no such place (being easy as to heaven), he
would give thirty thousand.... Mr Cumming the minister attended
him on his death-bed. He asked his daughter, who is exceedingly
narrow, what he should give him. She replied that it was unusual to
give anything on such occasions. “Well, then,” says Charteris, “let us
have another flourish from him!” so calling his prayers. There
accidentally happened, the night he died, a prodigious hurricane,
which the vulgar ascribed to his death.’[716]

A transaction, well understood in Mar. 12.

Scotland, but unknown and probably
incomprehensible in England—‘an inharmonious settlement’—took
place in the parish of St Cuthbert’s, close to Edinburgh. A Mr
Wotherspoon having been presented by the crown to this charge, to
the utter disgust of the parishioners, the Commission of the General
Assembly sent one of their number, a Mr Dawson, to effect the
‘edictal service.’ The magistrates, knowing the temper of the
parishioners, brought the City Guard to protect the ceremony as it
proceeded in the church; so the people could do nothing there. Their
rage, however, being irrepressible, they came out, tore down the
edict from the kirk-door, and seemed as if 1732.
they would tear down the kirk itself. The
City Guard fired upon them, and wounded one woman.[717]

June 24.
 Owing to the difficulty of travelling, few of the remarkable
foreigners who came to England found their way to Scotland; but
now and then an extraordinary person appeared. At this date, there
came to Edinburgh, and put up ‘at the house of Yaxley Davidson, at
the Cowgate Port,’ Joseph Jamati, Baculator or Governor of
Damascus. He appeared to be sixty, was of reddish-black
complexion, grave and well-looking, wearing a red cloth mantle
trimmed with silver lace, and a red turban set round with white
muslin; had a gray beard about half a foot long; and was described as
‘generally a Christian.’ Assistance under some severe taxation of the
Turkish pacha was what he held forth as the object of his visit to
Europe. He came to Edinburgh, with recommendations from the
Duke of Newcastle and other persons of distinction, and proposed to
make a round of the principal towns, and visit the Duke of Athole
and other great people. He was accompanied by an interpreter and
another servant. It appears that this personage had a public
reception from the magistrates, who bestowed on him a purse of
gold. In consequence of receiving a similar contribution from the
Convention of Burghs, he ultimately resolved to return without
making his proposed tour.
Four years later, Edinburgh received visits, in succession, from two
other Eastern hierarchs, one of them designated as archbishop of
Nicosia in Cyprus, of the Armenian Church, the other being Scheik
Schedit, from Berytus, near Mount Lebanon, of the Greek Church,
both bringing recommendatory letters from high personages, and
both aiming at a gathering of money for the relief of their
countrymen suffering under the Turks. Scheik Schedit had an
interpreter named Michel Laws, and two servants, and the whole
party went formally in a coach ‘to hear sermon in the High
Church.’[718]

The Scottish newspapers intimate that on July 11.

this day, between two and three afternoon,
there was felt at Glasgow ‘a shock of an earthquake, which lasted
about a second.’

July 28.
 The six Highland companies were reviewed at Ruthven, in
Badenoch, by General Wade, and were 1732.
praised for their good state of discipline.
‘We of this country,’ says the reporter of the affair, ‘and, indeed, all
the Highland and northern parts of the kingdom, have substantial
reason to be well satisfied with them, since for a long time there has
not been the least ground to complain of disorders of any kind;
which we attribute to the vigilance of their officers, and a right
distribution and position of the several companies.’[719]

Robert Trotter, schoolmaster of Dumfries, published a

Compendium of Latin Grammar, ‘the conceitedness, envy, and
errors’ of which were next year exposed in a brochure of
Animadversions by John Love, the schoolmaster of Dumbarton. Not
long after Love had thus disposed of Mr Trotter, he was himself put
on the defensive before the kirk-session of his parish, on a charge of
brewing on a Sunday. Probably the verb was only applicable in a
neuter form—that is, nature, by continuing her fermenting process
on the Sabbath, was the only delinquent—for the minister, ‘after a
juridical trial, was obliged to make a public apology for having
maliciously accused calumniated innocence.’[720] Love, who was the
preceptor of Tobias Smollett, afterwards distinguished himself by a
controversy with the notorious Lauder, who, by forgery, tried to
derogate from the fame of Milton.

Since 1598 we have not heard of any 1733. May 14.

foreigners coming into Scotland to play
dangerous tricks upon long tight ropes; but now, unexpectedly, a
pair of these diverting vagabonds, one described as an Italian who
had performed his wonders in all the cities of Europe, the other as
his son, presented themselves. A rope being fixed between the Half-
moon Battery in the Castle, and a place on the south side of the
Grassmarket, two hundred feet below, the father slid down in half a
minute. The son performed the same feat, blowing a trumpet all the
way, to the astonishment of ‘an infinite crowd of spectators.’ Three
days afterwards, there was a repetition of the performance, at the
desire of several persons of quality, when, after sliding down, the
father made his way up again, firing a pistol, beating a drum, and
playing a variety of antics by the way, proclaiming, moreover, that
here he could defy all messengers, sheriffs’ officers, and macers of
the Court of Session. Being sore fatigued at the end of the
performance, he offered a guinea to the 1733.
sutler of the Castle for a draught of ale,
which the fellow was churlish enough to refuse.
The two funambuli failed on a subsequent trial, ‘their equipage not
at all answering.’ Not many weeks after, we learn that William
Hamilton, mason in the Dean, trying the like tricks on a rope
connected with Queensferry steeple, fell off the rope, and was killed.
[721]

In the course of this year, a body called the Edinburgh Company

of Players performed plays in the Tailors’ Hall, in the Cowgate. On
the 6th June, they had the Beggars’ Opera for the benefit of the
Edinburgh Infirmary. They afterwards acted Othello, Hamlet, Henry
IV., Macbeth, and King Lear, ‘with great applause.’ In December,
they presented before a large audience the Tempest, ‘every part, and
even what required machinery, being performed in great order.’ In
February 1734, the Conscious Lovers was performed ‘for the benefit
of Mrs Woodward,’ ‘the doors not to be opened till four of the clock,
performance to begin at six.’ In March, the Wonder is advertised,
‘the part of the Scots colonel by Mr Weir, and that of his servant
Gibby, in Highland dress, by Mr Wescomb; and all the other parts to
the best advantage.’ Allan Ramsay must have been deeply concerned
in the speculation, because he appears in the office-copy of the
newspaper (Caledonian Mercury) as the paymaster for the
advertisements.
Nor was this nascent taste for the amusements of the stage
confined to Edinburgh. In August, the company is reported as setting
out early one morning for Dundee, Montrose, Aberdeen, &c., ‘in
order to entertain the ladies and gentlemen in the different stations
of their circuit.’ We soon after hear of their being honoured at
Dundee with the patronage of the ancient and honourable society of
freemasons, who marched in a body, with the grand-master at their
head, to the playhouse, ‘in their proper apparel, with hautboys and
other music playing before them;’ all this to hear the Jubilee and The
Devil to Pay.
In December, the Edinburgh company was again in the Tailors’
Hall, and now it ventured on ‘a pantomime in grotesque characters,’
costing something in the getting up; wherefore ‘nothing less than full
prices will be taken during the whole performance.’ In consideration
of the need for space, it was ‘hoped that no gentleman whatever will
take it amiss if they are refused admittance 1733.
behind the scenes.’ Soon after, we hear of
the freemasons patronising the play of Henry IV., marching to the
house ‘in procession, with aprons and white gloves, attended with
flambeaux.’ Mrs Bulkely took her benefit on the 22d January in
Oroonoko and a farce, in both of which she was to play; but ‘being
weak, and almost incapable to walk, [she] cannot acquit herself to
her friends’ satisfaction as usual; yet hopes to be favoured with their
presence.’
It is observable that the plays represented in the Cowgate house
were all of them of classic merit. This was, of course, prudential with
regard to popular prejudices. Persons possessed of a love of literature
were very naturally among those most easily reconciled to the stage;
and amongst these we may be allowed to class certain schoolmasters,
who about this time began to encourage their pupils to recite plays as
a species of rhetorical exercise.
On Candlemas, 1734—when by custom the pupils in all schools in
Scotland brought gifts to their masters, and had a holiday—the
pupils of the Perth Grammar School made an exhibition of English
and Latin readings in the church before the clergy, magistrates, and a
large miscellaneous auditory. ‘The Tuesday after, they acted Cato in
the school, which is one of the handsomest in Scotland, before three
hundred gentlemen and ladies. The youth, though they had never
seen a play acted, performed surprisingly both in action and
pronunciation, which gave general satisfaction. After the play, the
magistrates entertained the gentlemen at a tavern.’[722]
In August, ‘the young gentlemen of Dalkeith School acted, before a
numerous crowd of spectators, the tragedy of Julius Cæsar and
comedy of Æsop, with a judgment and address inimitable at their
years.’ At the same time, the pupils in the grammar school of
Kirkcaldy performed a piece composed by their master, entitled The
Royal Council for Advice, or the Regular Education of Boys the
Foundation of all other National Improvements. ‘The council
consisted of a preses and twelve members, decently and gravely
seated round a table like senators. The other boys were posted at a
due distance in a crowd, representing people come to attend this
meeting for advice: from whom entered in their turn and order, a
tradesman, a farmer, a country gentleman, a nobleman, two
schoolmasters, &c., and, last of all, a gentleman who complimented
and congratulated the council on their 1733.
noble design and worthy performances.’
The whole exhibition is described as giving high satisfaction to the
audience.
This sort of fair weather could not last. At Candlemas, 1735, the
Perth school-boys acted George Barnwell—certainly an ill-chosen
play—twice before large audiences, comprising many persons of
distinction; and it was given out that on the succeeding Sunday ‘a
very learned moral sermon, suitable to the occasion, was preached in
the town.’ Immediately after came the corrective. The kirk-session
had nominated a committee to take measures to prevent the school
from being ‘converted into a playhouse, whereby youth are diverted
from their studies, and employed in the buffooneries of the stage;’
and as for the moral sermon, it was ‘directed against the sins and
corruptions of the age, and was very suitable to the resolution of the
session.’

England was pleasingly startled in 1721 by July.

the report which came home regarding a
singularly gallant defence made by an English ship against two
strongly armed pirate vessels in the Bay of Juanna, near Madagascar.
The East India Company was peculiarly gratified by the report, for,
though it inferred the loss of one of their ships, it told them of a
severe check given to a system of marine depredation, by which their
commerce was constantly suffering.
It appeared that the Company’s ship Cassandra, commanded by
Captain Macrae, on coming to the Bay of Juanna in July 1720, heard
of a shipwrecked pirate captain being engaged in fitting out a new
vessel on the island of Mayotta, and Macrae instantly formed the
design of attacking him. When ready, on the 8th of August, to sail on