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but in reality nothing but a libel.1 Such, then, was the
fate of the unfortunate Scot, Alexander Blackwell, who
may have been an adventurer, but who certainly was
more sinned against than sinning, and on that account
deserves our pitying remembrance.1 2
An instructive example of how far the intensity of
party prejudice may destroy all fairness of judgment, even
in men of a liberal education and learning, is given us in
the verdict of Ahlström, formerly Swedish Consul in
London, a man of great wealth—chiefly known as having
been the first who introduced the potato into Sweden.
According to him, Blackwell was the “ demoniac incarnation
of England’s envy of the newly flourishing Swedish
industry, which must be put down at all risks ”—a view
which seems to have been shared by his friend, the great
Linné.
One might have thought that Sweden, torn as it was by
party strife, would have kept aloof from complications with
foreign powers, and certainly the Swedish population as a
whole yearned for peace after this. But such was the
cruelty of fate that, scarcely fifty years after the events
related above, treasonable conspiracies with Russia for
gaining the independence of Finland dragged Sweden
again into war, a war for which it was at that time
particularly ill-prepared, for, u besides the forgetfulness of
one’s duty and the censoriousness which are generated by
party strife, a moral cowardice had spread which considered
a resistance against a gigantic country like Russia an
1 Published in 1763 at Norrköping.
2 Blackwell wrote in Swedish, Rön om Humlegårds plantering och
bruk samt at fördrifva Mullvadar (Experiences in the laying out of Hop
Gardens, and how to extirpate Moles), Stockholm, n.d. ; 2. Försök till
Landbruketsförbättring i Sverige (An Attempt to improve the Agriculture
of Sweden), ridiculed by Linné.
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