"The spirit of the Declaration of Arbroath (6 April 1320) abides today, defiantly resisting any tyranny that would disarm, disperse and despoil proud people of just morals, determined to keep the means of protecting their families and way of life close at hand."

The above is a quote! I copied ages ago I can't remember when or where from?. It may well have been written by one of our American cousins? who-ever it was I'm grateful, its a modern view and sentiment I also share!!

As a native Scot, lucky enough to reside in the land of my birth, I and many others still see "THE DECLARATION OF ARBROATH" as an important historical and unique symbol of our nationhood, it proudly declares that if the sovereign is unable to carry out the duties to the nation and its people, we! the people have the right to remove him (democracy in its infancy and in the making) eg:

"Yet if he should give up what he has begun, and agree to make us or our kingdom subject to the King of England or the English, we should exert ourselves at once to drive him out as our enemy and a subverter of his own rights and ours, and make some other man who was well able to defend us our King;"

The other significant section of the delaration that facinates a lot of Scots pertains to our origins? eg:

"Most Holy Father and Lord, we know and from the chronicles and books of the ancients we find that among other famous nations our own, the Scots, has been graced with widespread renown. They journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage tribes, but nowhere could they be subdued by any race, however barbarous. Thence they came, twelve hundred years after the people of Israel crossed the Red Sea, to their home in the west where they still live today. The Britons they first drove out, the Picts they utterly destroyed, and, even though very often assailed by the Norwegians, the Danes and the English, they took possession of that home with many victories and untold efforts; and, as the historians of old time bear witness, they have held it free of all bondage ever since. In their kingdom there have reigned one hundred and thirteen kings of their own royal stock, the line unbroken a single foreigner. The high qualities and deserts of these people, were they not otherwise manifest, gain glory enough from this: that the King of kings and Lord of lords, our Lord Jesus Christ, after His Passion and Resurrection, called them, even though settled in the uttermost parts of the earth, almost the first to His most holy faith. Nor would He have them confirmed in that faith by merely anyone but by the first of His Apostles — by calling, though second or third in rank — the most gentle Saint Andrew, the Blessed Peter's brother, and desired him to keep them under his protection as their patron forever."

Tom