Amid the plethora of words expended on editorials in the nineteenth-century Scottish press it is possible to identify certain recurring themes. One is that Scottish politics, like Scottish society as a whole, were different from those of England, in being consistently more liberal and egalitarian. Secondly, although the issue of how to handle the problems of governing Ireland was a huge factor in politics across all of Britain, it loomed particularly large in Scotland, not only because Scotland had a large and growing population of Irish extraction from the 1840s, but because there was a concern to show that Scotland's relationship with England was one of partnership and, therefore, substantially different from the Anglo-Irish relationship. At the same time, there was a determination that the result of the Scotland–England relationship would not be complete assimilation with the loss of distinctive Scottish institutions or a clear sense of Scottish nationhood. A key factor in this was the idea that Scotland's Presbyterian legacy was central to that identity and had to be defended in general terms, even if there was an irritation with the institutions of Presbyterianism that they often seemed hopelessly divided. Finally, there were issues of relationships with other parts of the world and particularly with those parts that were within the Empire and its various spheres of influence, and what the Scottish role in these had been, was and should be in the future.

Every general election from 1832 until 1895 saw a Liberal majority in Scotland. Only in the ‘khaki’ election of 1900 did the Conservative-Liberal Unionist alliance outnumber Liberals, and the 1906 and 1910 elections saw the familiar pattern return. One can, therefore, detect a certain pride in Scotland's radicalism, particularly when so many of the Liberal leaders held Scottish seats, Asquith for East Fife, Birrell for West Fife, Morley for Montrose, Campbell Bannerman for Stirling and Haldane for Haddingtonshire. Being Liberal was to many a powerful feature of Scottishness, and the contrast was with the Toryism of Scotland before 1832 and the continuing Toryism of much of England.