How has Scotland changed under Macbeth's rule?

Under Macbeth's rule, Scotland changed for the worse. Macbeth killed the good old king Duncan, and Duncan's sons, Malcolm & Donalbin, escaped to England & Ireland respectively for their safety. Constantly suffering from a guilty conscience & a deep psychological fear, Macbeth proves to be a cruel, tyrannical king, haunted by the prophecy that Banquo's issues would be the future kings. Murderers appointed by him kill Banquo & attempt to kill Banquo's son, Fleance. Subsequently, Macbeth gets the family of Macduff killed. As Macbeth moves from fear to fear, he unleashes a reign of terror in Scotland, killing wholesale whomsoever he doubts to be his enemy and therefore, a traitor.

In act3 sc.6, a Lord, while in conversation with Lennox, refers to Macduff's visit to the court of the English king to initiate a military campaign against Macbeth so that life returns to normal: '.......we may again / Give to our tables meat, sleep to our nights, / Free from our feasts and banquets bloody knives, / Do faithful homage and receive free honours:/ All which we pine for now'.

Ross, talking to Lady Macduff in act4 sc.2, uses the analogy of a voyage to suggest the state of affairs in Scotland under Macbeth's rule: 'But cruel are the times, when we are traitors/ And do not know ourselves, when we hold rumour / From what we fear, yet know not what we fear, / But float upon a wild and violent sea / Each way and move'.

How Scotland changed under the despotic violence of Macbeth is best expressed in the Macduff-Macbeth conversation in act4 sc.3. We hear Macduff say, 'Each new morn / New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows / Strike heaven on the face, that it resounds/ As if it felt with Scotland and yell'd out / Like syllables of dolour'. Malcolm responds in the similar vein of melancholy anguish:'I think our country sinks beneath the yoke;/ It weeps, it bleeds, and each new day a gash / Is added to her wounds...' Later in the same scene, Ross describes the deplorable state of Scotland in highly coloured language:

" It cannot

Be call'd our mother, but our grave; where nothing,

But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;

Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the air

Are made, not mark'd; where violent sorrow seems

A modern ecstasy; the dead man's knell

Is there scarce ask'd for who; and good men's lives

Expire before the flowers in their caps,

Dying or ere they sicken".