In recognition of his public services and of his high position as Secretary of State for Scotland.
"Today I am proud and grateful in being made a freeman of a city which, above all others to a patriotic Scotsman, is fittingly regarded as the mecca of our dreams, and for us enshrines the noblest sentiments of our race. This resplendent city, with its ancient castle, the Royal Palace, that old Parliament House, and haunting atmosphere of bygone days, symbolises for us some of the most glowing episodes and chapters of our rough island story.
We of Scottish blood are usually, credited with being a hardheaded people, yielding little to mere sentiment or fanciful notions. But somehow our national heritage of song and melody and story for ever belies any such prosaic attribute as the whole truth concerning our national character. Fletcher of Saltain's dictum:- Let me but have the making of a nation's songs And I care not who makes its laws,' reveals the sensitiveness of our race. I love to think that our national traits and characteristics, having such a definite source, will have as the ultimate goal some such ennobling conceptions of national worth which prompt us to regard this land of ours-Scotland-as a land of promise, a land of light, a land of better living, a land which, in the spirit of eternal youth, the successive generations are called upon to fashion yet more and more after their heart's desire; where freedom and liberty and justice shall be extended and humaner laws made, I hope, in the old Parliament House of Edinburgh, broad-based upon the people's will, and growing personal worth, shall one day make this Scotland of ours a glory among the nations - worthy of that great eulogy passed upon her by one of our poets:-
'There by the crag and the moor she stands,
The mother of half the world's great men.'"