No Smoke Without Fire

No matter how glorious the epoch, there are always a few who simply can't keep up. At a time when the mainstream of tolerant Britishness is denouncing traitors, attacking shirkers, rooting out enemies of the people, hunting down citizens of nowhere and maintaining environmental hostility for the hordes of migrant cockroaches, a few backward provincials are demanding the problematisation of witch-hunts. In Scotland, mere historians have suggested that the proportion of witches tortured and executed was remarkably high even for a Christian country, and conspiracy theories are already emerging to the effect that the persecutors' motives may occasionally have been less than pure. As one would expect, a memorial is being called for by the kind of people who enjoy criticising the wealth creators of the Atlantic slave trade now that they're not here to defend themselves.