Sir, Richard Roche's recent Irishman's Diary about Thomas Muir was timely. Some other United Scotsmen were: William Skirving, author of The Husbandman's Assistant, Thomas Fyshe Palmer, Maurice Margarot and a non- Scot, Joseph Gerrald (1763-1796) author of the radical A Convention the only means of saving us from ruin.
The least known United Scotsman was George Mealmaker (1768-1808), a weaver from Dundee. He wrote a pamphlet The Moral and Political Catechism of Man. His name was omitted from the monument erected by the Chartists in Edinburgh in the 1840s. Everyone is aware of the United Irishmen, but the United Scotsmen and Scottish Reform Movement set Britain on the road to universal suffrage and the Reform Bill of 1832. Perhaps the British Labour Party will examine its roots in the context of the plans for Scottish devolution and the prospect of an Australian constitutional convention and trace its relationship with Scottish and Irish national aspirations with modern constitutional reform. - Yours, etc.,
Old Ross, Co. Wexford