[1707-1708 A.D.] was finally passed on the 16th of January, 1707, by a hundred and ten votes against sixty-nine. "And there's an end o' an auld sang," said the chancellor. It was an insult, cries the chivalrous Sir Walter Scott, "for which he deserved to be destroyed on the spot by his indignant countrymen." Belhaven complained that the union would compel the peers of Scotland to "lay aside their walking-swords when in company with the English peers, lest their selfdefence should be called murder." We have outgrown the use of walkingswords, even for the self-defence which the Scottish peer thought a privilege of his order; certainly so for such homicide as the Scottish poet thought a fitting propitiation to the shades of the hundred and fourteen kings whose line began when Cheops was unborn. Before the Scottish parliament separated they regulated the election of the representative peers, and the proportion of county and borough members of the commons. They had to arrange the division of the equivalent money, of which the Darien or African company had a large share. The last meeting of the Scottish estates was on the 26th of March, 1707. The order of the Thistle, which had been revived by Queen Anne in 1703, was not filled up by elections till some few years had elapsed. James II had contemplated the restitution of the order, but no patent for this object had passed the great seal. There was now in the possession of the crown the means of bestowing a great distinction, essentially national; for in the statutes of 1703 the number of knights was limited to twelve peers of Scotland, the sovereign being the head. This number somewhat profanely kept in view the precedent of the Saviour and the twelve apostles. George I broke through the principle of exclusive nationality by bestowing the honour upon a few English peers. George IV overturned the scriptural character by raising the number of knights to sixteen. The parliament of England had met in December, during the anxious discussion in Scotland of the articles of the treaty of union. At the end of January the queen sent to the house of peers and announced that the treaty for a union had been ratified by act of parliament in Scotland, with some alterations and additions. The articles were then presented. In the lords, a bill was brought in for the security of the church of England as by law established; the movers having, of course, a slight apprehension that the sovereign's oath to preserve the church of Scotland might be liable to misconstruction unless thus qualified. The debates in the English parliament on the principle of the union were animated, but were not violent. The ministry were anxious to pass the bill for the union, without making any alteration in the articles as adopted by the Scottish parliament. They succeeded in preventing a debate on each clause by inserting the articles in the preamble of the bill, with the two acts for the security of the churches of each country. By this device the measure was to be accepted or rejected as a whole. It was passed without difficulty, and on the 6th of March, 1707, the queen gave the royal assent. AFTERMATH OF THE UNION Two acts of the British parliament naturally followed the Act of Union. The Scottish privy council was abolished in 1708. A secretary of state for Scotland continued until 1746 to manage the Scottish department in London; but the lord advocate, the adviser of the crown on all legal matters both in London and Edinburgh, gradually acquired a large, and after the suppression of the office of the Scottish secretary a paramount influence [1709-1745 A.D.] in purely Scottish affairs, though he was nominally a subordinate of the home secretary.' In 1709 the law of treason was assimilated to that of England, being made more definite and less liable to extension by construction in the criminal courts. In the later years of Anne, when after the fall of Marlborough power passed from the whig to the tory party, two statutes were passed of a different character. Patronage was restored in the Presbyterian church notwithstanding the protests of the assembly, and proved a fertile source of discord. A limited toleration act in favour of the Episcopalians, permitting them to worship in private chapels, was opposed by the Presbyterians but carried. With the union of the parliaments Scotland lost its legislative independence. Its representation in the British parliament for more than a century, based on the freehold franchise in the counties and in the burghs controlled by town councils, which were close corporations, was a representation of special classes and interests rather than of the nation. It almost appeared as if the prophecy of Belhaven would be accomplished and there would be an end of an old song. But Scottish history was not destined yet to end. The character of the people, though their language and manners gradually became more like those of England, remained distinct. They retained a separate church and clergy. Independent courts and a more cosmopolitan system of law opened a liberal profession and afforded a liberal education to youthful ambition. A national system of parish schools, burgh schools, and universities, though inadequately endowed and far from reaching the ideal of Knox and Melville, gave opportunities to the lower as well as the higher classes of receiving at a small cost an education suited for practical uses and the business of everyday life. The Scot had been from the earliest times more inclined to travel, to migrate, to colonise than the Englishman, not that he had a less fervent love of home, but a soil comparatively poor made it necessary for many to seek their fortune abroad. This tendency which had led Scottish monks, soldiers, and professors to embrace foreign service, now found new openings in trade, commerce, colonial enterprise in America, the East and the West Indies, in the southern hemisphere and the exploration of unknown parts of the globe. Accustomed to poverty, Scottish emigrants acquired habits of frugality, industry, and perseverance, and were rewarded by success in most of their undertakings. Nor, if war be regarded as necessary to the continued existence of a nation, was it altogether absent, but the cause with which the name of Scotland became identified was the losing one. The two rebellions proved the devoted loyalty which still attached many of the Highland clans, the Catholics, and some of the Episcopalians to the descendants of the Stuarts. But that in 1715, preceded by an abortive attempt in 1708, was put down by a single battle. Sheriffmuir, if it could scarcely be claimed as a victory by Argyll, led to the speedy dispersal of the clans which had gathered round the standard of Mar. Thirty years later the romantic rising of the Highlanders under the young Pretender found the government unprepared. Once more for a brief space Holyrood was a royal court. The defeat of Cope at Prestonpans and the rapid march of the Scottish army, slightly reinforced by Catholics from the northern and midland shires of England, to Derby, by which it cut off the duke of Cumberland's forces from the capital, made London tremble. Divided counsels, the absence of any able leader, and the smallness of their number (not more than five thousand) prevented the daring policy of attacking Lon'In 1885 a secretary for Scotland was again appointed with a separate office at Dover House, London. [1745-1747 A.D.] don, which Charles himself favoured, and a retreat was determined on. It was skilfully effected, and on the 26th of December the little army, which had left Edinburgh on the 31st of October and reached Derby on the 4th of December, arrived in Glasgow. It was not favourably received, the southwest of Scotland being the district least inclined to the Stuarts, and it marched on Stirling to assist Lord John Drummond and Lord Strathallan, who had commenced its siege, which General Hawley threatened to raise. His defeat at Falkirk was the last success of the jacobites. The duke of Cumberland was sent to command the royal forces, and Charles Edward was forced by Lord George Murray and the Highland chiefs to abandon the siege of Stirling and retreat to Iverness. He was at once pursued by the duke, and his defeat at Culloden (the 16th of April, 1746) scattered his followers and compelled him to seek safety in flight to the Hebrides, from which, after five months' wanderings, he escaped to France. The last rebellion within Great Britain was put down with severity. Many soldiers taken in arms were shot and no consideration was shown to the wounded. The chief officers and even some privates taken prisoners were tried and executed at various places in the north of England. The earls of Cromarty and Kilmarnock and Lord Balmerino were reserved for the judgment of their peers in London, and having pleaded guilty were beheaded at Tower Hill. The crafty Lovat, who had avoided appearing in arms, but was really at the bottom of the rising, though he pretended to serve both sides, was the last to suffer. An act of indemnity was passed a few weeks after his execution. But effective measures were taken to prevent any renewal of the rebellion. The estates and titles of all who had been privy to it were forfeited. An act was passed prohibiting the use of arms and the Highland dress; and the abolition of the military tenure of ward-holding, unfortunately preserved at the. union, rooted out the remnants of feudal and military power till then left in the hands of the nobles and chiefs. These changes in the law had the willing consent of the Lowland and burghal population in Scotland, to whom the [1747-1800 A.D.] lawless and freebooting habits of the Highlanders had been a cause of frequent loss and constant alarm. Somewhat later the masterly policy of Pitt enlisted the Scottish Celts in the service of the crown by forming the Highland regiments. The recollection of Glencoe and Culloden was forgotten after the common victories of the British arms in India, the Peninsula, and Waterloo. In one direction the jacobite cause survived its defeat. Poetry seized on its romantic incidents, idealised the young prince who at least tried to win his father's crown, satirised the foreign and German, the whig and covenanting, elements opposed to the Stuart restoration, and substituted loyalty for patriotism. Self-sacrifice and devotion to a cause believed right, though deserted by fortune (qualities rare amongst the mass of any nation), dignified the jacobites like the cavaliers with some of the nobler traits of chivalry, and the jacobite ballads have their place in literature as one of the last expiring notes of medieval romance. Music and tradition fortunately preserved their charm before the cold hand of history traced the sad end of Charles Edward, the pensioner of foreign courts, wasting his declining years in ignoble pleasures. It might be hard to say whether the first Hanoverians or the last Stuarts least deserved that men should fight and die for them; but the former represented order, progress, civil and religious liberty; the latter were identified with the decaying legend of the divine right of kings and the claim of the Roman church not merely to exclusive orthodoxy but to temporal power and jurisdiction inconsistent with the independence of nations and freedom of conscience. Although a larger minority in Scotland than in England clung to the traditions of the past, an overwhelming majority of the nation, including all its progressive elements, were in favour of the new constitution and the change of dynasty. COMMERCE AND CULTURE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY During the remaining half of the eighteenth century and the commencement of the nineteenth a period of prosperity was enjoyed by Scotland, and the good effects of the union, intercepted by the rebellions, became visible. The Scottish nation, without losing its individuality, was stimulated by contact and friendly rivalry with its English neighbour in the arts of peace. It advanced in intellectual as well as material respects more than in any part of its previous history. It became, through commerce, manufactures, and improved agriculture a comparatively rich instead of a poor country. Skilful engineering made the Clyde a successful competitor with the Thames and the Mersey, and Glasgow became one of the most populous cities in Great Britain. The industrial arts made rapid progress, and the fine arts began to flourish. The art of saving capital and using it as a source of credit was reduced to a system. Banks, not unknown in other countries and at an earlier date, are in their modern form a Scottish invention. Besides those which sprang up in Scotland itself, the national banks of England and France owed their origin to two Scotsmen. A safe system of life insurance represented the provident habits and business talents of the nation. Adam Smith shares with the French economists the honour of founding political economy as the science of the wealth of nations. Mental philosophy became a favourite study, and a distinctively Scottish school produced thinkers who deeply influenced the later systems of the Continent. The history not of Scotland only but of England |