In his survey of the agriculture of Aberdeenshire, the Reverend George Skene Keith did not restrict himself to matters purely agrarian. An observation that Adam Smith would have probably approved of was as follows:

He was keen to stress that assessments for poor relief were not a feature of the county's life and then moved on to an important aspect, as he saw it, of church governance:

This passage was clearly designed with a British audience in mind. This was not just the translation of elders into an English equivalent, but was also the unstated contrast between the sociability associated with churchwardens and the more sober Scottish approach. Other hints in the book, such as references to Holt's contemporaneous survey of Lancashire farming, also indicate that Keith was writing for a British audience who he would expect to appreciate these contrasts. The lack of a paid-for dinner might seem to be an extremely mundane matter and not one expressive of significantly different approaches to governance and accountability. The same might be said for many of the practices we have examined so far. Taken individually, equivalents might be found in other systems. However, the point is that the contrast need not be between individual items on their own, but as part of an overall system. When we undertake such a contrast then the distinctiveness of the Scottish system becomes apparent.