320 LORD BELHAVEN'S ORATION. [1706. attorneys, laying aside their walking swords when in company with the English peers, lest their self-defence should be found murder. I think I see the honourable estate of barons, the bold assertors of the nation's rights and liberties in the worst of times, now setting a watch upon their lips and a guard upon their tongues, lest they be found guilty of scandalum magnatum. I think I see the royal state of boroughs walking their desolate streets, hanging their heads under disappointments, wormed out of all the branches of their old trade, uncertain what hand to turn to, necessitate to become 'prentices to their unkind neighbours; and yet after all, finding their trade so fortified by companies and secured by prescriptions, that they despair of any success therein. I think I see our learned judges laying aside their practiques and decisions, studying the common law of England, gravelled with Certioraries, Nisi Priuses, Writs of Error, Verdicts, Indovar, Ejectione Firma, Injunctions, Demurs, &c., and frighted with appeals and avocations, because of the new regulations and rectifications they may meet with. I think I see the valiant and gallant soldiery, either sent to learn the plantation trade abroad; or at home petitioning for a small subsistence, as a reward of their honourable exploits; while their old corps are broken, the common soldiers left to beg, and the youngest English corps kept standing. I think I see the honest industrious tradesman loaded with new taxes and impositions, disappointed of the equivalents, drinking water in place of ale, eating his saltless pottage, petitioning for encouragement to his manufactures, and answered by counterpetitions. In short, I think I see the laborious ploughman, with his corn spoiling upon his hands for want of sale, cursing the day of his birth, dreading the expense of his burial, and uncertain whether to marry or do worse. I think I see the incurable difficulties of the landed-men, fettered under the golden chain of equivalents, their pretty daughters petitioning for want of husbands and their sons for want of employment. I think I see our mariners delivering up their ships to their Dutch partners, and what through presses and necessity, earning their bred as underlings in the English navy.. But above all, my lord, I think I see our ancient mother Caledonia, like Cæsar, sitting in the midst of our senate, ruefully looking round about her, covering herself with her royal garment, attending the fatal blow, and breathing out her last with an Et tu quoque, mi fili.” * The Scottish orator was a bold imitator of him who "fulmin'd over Greece." But his rhetoric and his logic would appear to have been ill companions. He contrasts England and Scotland. Our neighbours in England are great and glorious; provinces and kingdoms are the results of their victories; the royal navy is the terror of Europe; their trade and commerce extends through the universe, encircling the whole habitable world, and rendering their own capital city the emporium for the whole inhabitants of the earth. Scotland, he says, is quite otherwise. We are an obscure, poor people, though formerly of better account; removed to a remote corner of the world, without name and without alliances; our posts are mean and precarious. "Our all is at stake," he then exclaims: "Hannibal is at our gates. Hannibal is come within our gates. Hannibal is come * Lord Belhaven's Speech is printed at length in "Parliamentary History," vol. vi. ; and in Defoe's "History of the Union." 321 1706.] LORD BELHAVEN'S ORATION. the length of this table. He is at the foot of this throne; he will demolish this throne. If we take not notice, he'll seize upon these Regalia; he'll take them as our spolia opima; and whip us out of this House never to return again." Hannibal did some of these terrible things. But Caledonia did not, "ruefully looking about her, covering herself with her royal garment," sit idly upon the oak-chest in which the spolia opima were locked up. She bestirred herself to make her obscure poor people great and glorious as their neighbours;-to make their joint trade and commerce extend through the universe, in a generous rivalry ;-to change the mean and precarious posts of Scottish administration into a more than equal participation in the greatest offices and distinctions of the British commonwealth;-to divest, indeed, the peerage of Scotland of feudal jurisdiction, of followers and vassalages, and thus to make them truly noble and honourable in their obedience to laws which should override the old local tyrannies;-to inspire the soldiery of Scotland with the true patriotism that has survived the false glory of border hatred, and made the Abercrombies, and Moores, and Campbells fight for the island as the heritage of one free people ;-to make the artisans and tradesmen of decayed royal burghs, instead of walking their desolate streets, or becoming 'prentices to their unkind neighbours, raise up factories that might rival the proudest of Lancashire and Yorkshire, and fill the Clyde and the Forth with forests of masts ;-to cure the difficulties of the landed men by increasing their rents ten-fold, and twenty-fold ;-to convert the laborious plough-man, with his patch of oats, into the most flourishing, because skilful, farmer on the face of the earth. Caledonia, with a few occasional heartburnings, has been smiling to see this process going forward for a century and a half; and though she duly believes that her younger sister had the best of the bargain of 1706, she rejoices with her inmost heart that, under that partnership, enmity gradually passed into mutual confidence, and then into reciprocal esteem and firm friendship. 322 MATERIAL INTERESTS OF SCOTLAND. [1706. Standing as we now do upon the platform of a hundred and fifty years' experience, it would be manifestly unwise and unjust to speak of the convictions of such minds as those of Belhaven and Fletcher, and others of the honest patriots at this great crisis of their country's destiny, as manifesting their incapacity of looking beyond their own immediate times. They rested their opposition to an incorporating Union upon their belief that it would destroy the nationality of Scotland, without any corresponding public benefits. "Should not the memory of our noble predecessors' valour and constancy rouse up our drooping spirits," ejaculated Belhaven. "Are our noble predecessors' souls got so far into the English cabbage-stock and cauliflowers that we should show the least inclination that way?" Their watchword was our ancient kingdom"-a kingdom with a long uninterrupted line of kings, even a hundred and twelve kings, whose veritable portraits are in Holyrood. Belhaven had a right to be proud of the great memories of his nation;-of its historical prowess blending with its mythic glories. The fables of such a nation are not to be despised. England could match Scotland in traditions of "Brutus' sacred progeny, Which had seven hundred years this sceptre borne." * She could match Scotland also in "fathers of war-proof." But it was the mistake of the Scottish patriots to believe that Englishmen were degeneratewholly given up to money-getting and luxurious gratification-" epicures," as they were called of old-devoted to Dutch cabbages and wheaten-bread, and despising honest kale and oatmeal. Yet if the Scots had their prejudices so had the English. Defoe told his countrymen, "Those who fancy there is nothing to be had in Scotland but wild men and ragged mountains, storms, snows, poverty, and barrenness, are quite mistaken." John Taylor, the Water Poet, had maintained, a century before, that in his "Pennilesse Pilgrimage" he had never seen more plenty or more cheap" than in Scotland. But both English and Scots knew full well that the superiority of England was not in the fertility of her land, but in the activity of her commerce. Her capital, from the days of the Tudors, had been steadily devoted to the extension of her trade. In truth, the strongest argument which the advocates of the Union could present to the sober Scottish mind,—an argument which overthrew all appeals to "free and independent kingdom,"-" national Church "-" noble ancestors "-was that the trade of the world should be as open to the Scot as to the Englishman. This was a concession which the Englishman long grumbled against. "It was a common apprehension in England, before the Union," says Hume, "that Scotland would soon drain them of their treasure, were an open trade allowed." The Scots were somewhat amazed when Godolphin at once consented to renounce most of the rubbish of prohibitory statutes, and when the Scotch woollen manufacture was absolutely to receive encouragement. Yet when the Articles of Union agreed to by the Commissioners were known, there were many in Scotland who maintained that the commercial advantages might be equally gained by a federal, instead of an incorporating Union. Mr. Seton, of Pitmedden, who was one of the Commissioners, contended in the Scottish Parliament that Essay, "Of the Balance of Trade." "Faery Queen." + Review. 1706.] VIEWS OF SETON OF PITMEDDEN. 323 this notion was a delusion: "This nation is behind all other nations of Europe, for many years, with respect to the effect of an extended trade. This nation being poor, and without force to protect its commerce, cannot reap great advantages by it, till it partake of the trade and protection of some powerful neighbour nation, that can communicate both these." He then shows that, 'supposing an entire separation from England," the established commerce of the English and Dutch, especially, would prevent any successful rivalry. The alliance of a neighbour nation was therefore essential. There was no chance of such an alliance with Holland, for they were each dealers in the same goods. With France" few advantages can be reaped, unless the old offensive and defensive league be revived between France and Scotland," and then there would be war with England. The possible results of such a war are thus gravely stated by Seton: "Allowing the Scots, in such a juncture, with the assistance of France, to conquer England, Scotland, by that conquest, could not hope to better its present state; for it is more than probable the conqueror would make her residence in England, as formerly the northern people used to do in their southern expeditions." The conquering Scot could not " quaff the pendent vintage as it grows; " but when the commerce of the Thames poured into his lap all the treasures of the East and of the West, he would leave the port of Leith to the petty gains of her fleet of herring-busses, and would drink "the blude-reid wine" with his king at Westminster, who would scorn to sit "in Dumferling toune." It was long the dream of the Jacobites that Scotland, with the assistance of France, might conquer England. The dreamers awoke, in 1745, to the dirge of "Mourn, hapless Caledonia, mourn." The strong common sense of Seton of Pitmedden sums up the benefits to Scotland of an incorporating Union, in words which sound more like a true prophecy than the rhetorical visions of the young seer, Belhaven: "I may assert, that by this Union we will have access to all the advantages in commerce which the English enjoy: we will be capable, by a good government, to improve our natural products, for the benefit of the whole island; and we will have our liberty, property, and religion, secured under the protection of one Sovereign, and one Parliament, of Great Britain." * It is satisfactory to contrast the manifestations in the Scottish Parliament of an enthusiastic exclusiveness, and of a less self-satisfied patriotism. It is satisfactory, because out of the fervid nationality and the practical wisdom have been formed that Scottish character, which has tardily but surely amalgamated with the English character, for the benefit of the whole island"-a character upon which the old English belief in the real and the stage Macsycophants has left no enduring taint-which has survived the growls of Johnson and the libels of Churchill ; which has ceased to be violently combative when any assimilation of the laws and institutions of the northern and southern sides of the Tweed is proposed; which calls up all the old fire of as true a nationality, when a common enemy of the whole island is to be fought, a common injustice to be redressed, or a common reform to be struggled for. When the vote was taken upon the first Article of the Treaty of Union,— viz., “That the two kingdoms of Scotland and England shall, upon the first day of May next ensuing the date hereof, and for ever after, be united into * Seton's statesmanlike speech is given in Defoe's "History of the Union;" and in Parliamentary History of England," vol. vi. 324 PROVISION FOR THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND-RIOTS. [1706. one kingdom by the name of Great Britain,"-there was a majority of thirtythree in favour of this fundamental proposition. There was a majority in each Estate-of peers, of barons or representatives of counties, of representatives of towns. The second Article for the Succession of the Monarchy, and the third for representation by one Parliament, were also carried within the next fortnight. The question which was excepted from the Treaty, that of the Church of Scotland, was then agitated; and it was resolved in a way which abated the fears of the Presbyterians, by passing a separate Act to provide for the Security of the Church; which Act was to be repeated as a part of any Act of the Scottish or English Parliament adopting the Union. Under this Statute, every sovereign of Great Britain, upon his or her accession, is to take an oath to protect the government, worship, discipline, rights, and privileges of the Church of Scotland. The Estates then proceeded to the consideration of the minute details of the remaining twenty Articles of the Treaty. This discussion lasted till the middle of January, 1707. The opposition to the Union beyond the walls of the Scottish Parliament could scarcely be called national, in a large sense of the word. But it was nevertheless a formidable opposition, manifesting itself amongst very various parties and conditions of society. The duke of Queensberry, the queen's High Commissioner, was instrumental in disarming the violence, both within the Parliament and without, by his patience and moderation. "The duke, in all the heats and animosities of the party, in all the convulsions of the kingdom, carried on the treaty with easiness, temper, and extraordinary conduct, not taking advantage of the rashness and madness of the people, pitying, rather than apprehending danger from their folly."* Queensberry was threatened with assassination. He was told that two and twenty had subscribed an oath with their blood, by which they were bound together to assassinate him. No attempt was made to commit this crime. There was a second outbreak in Edinburgh, but there was no bloodshed. Those who have been described as the fiercest mob in Europe were singularly harmless during the three months of excitement which preceded the passing of the Act of Union. There was a more serious riot at Glasgow on the 7th of November, which lasted several days. Those who had been fighting at Bothwell Brig with a fury which Claverhouse and Balfour have impersonated for history and romance, were now united to hunt after an obdurate provost who had declined to sanction a city-address against the Union. Jacobites and Cameronians,-Papists and Hill-preachers -were masters for a time of the city of Glasgow. "They ranged the streets and did what they pleased; no magistrate durst show his face to them; they challenged people as they walked the streets with this question, Are you for the Union? and no man durst own it but at his extremest hazard." They searched for arms in private houses; and their rudeness, says Defoe, is not to be described. But this rude mob took no life away. Except that there was no blood shed, they acted the exact part of an enraged ungoverned multitude." A few of the leaders of these riots were taken, and the Glasgow baillies were soon relieved of their fears. 66 There is a grave record of an important demonstration of this period, in a work which might pass for such an ingenious fiction as the famous " Gil Blas Defoe, "History of the Union," p. 212. + Ibid. p. 272. |