ALL great movements that
control the destinies of nations have their roots in constitutional
phenomena. To this rule, the union of Scotland and England forms no
exception. Towards the close of the seventeenth century there were
forces at work which rendered a change in the relations of the two
kingdoms inevitable, and which clearly indicated the direction such
change must take, if a solution at once satisfactory and permanent was
to be attained. The events of William’s reign had made the continuance
of the status quo impossible. The relations of the Scottish Parliament
to a king of Scotland, who was also king of England and was fast
becoming the bondservant of the English Parliament, had proved fatal to
the independence of the smaller nation. Scotland might still fondly
cling to the tradition of her separate existence as a free and equal
kingdom, but she found herself forced in practice to allow her national
policy to be controlled in the interests of a foreign nation—a nation
that had shown itself unsympathetic and contemptuous and had proved the
most bitter and the most successful of trade-rivals. The key to the
relations of the two kingdoms must thus be sought in the nature of the
bonds uniting their two separate legislatures to a common executive
head—a head so potent to thwart the weaker, so powerless to resist the
stronger. Mutual sympathy and a Reeling of interests and traditions in
common might have minimized the evils resultant from defective
constitutional machinery; but in 1707 the sentiment of nationality was
not a bond of union but rather a knife that cut the island sharply into
two hostile units. The political atmosphere was surcharged with feelings
of jealousy, mutual repulsion, and ill will.
The causes of Scottish discontent thus lay deeper than any trivial or
temporary misunderstanding, deeper than the memories of Glencoe and
Darien, bitter as these memories were. The discontent was the logical
outcome of the constitutional necessities of a critical situation; and,
before the close of the seventeenth century, the bond, in its existing
form, had become intolerable to Scotsmen. The principles at stake, when
properly understood, present themselves in a graphic and even dramatic
form, well calculated to appeal to the imagination of loyal Scotsmen and
to arrest the attention of their English fellow-citizens even after an
interval of two centuries. It is the more remarkable that the
bi-centenary of the Union of 1707, an event that created a powerful
nation destined to play a leading part in the politics of the old world
and in the colonization of the new, should have aroused only languid
interest in Scotland, while meeting w\h almost cynical apathy in
England. The tepid enthusiasm excited in Northern Britain in 1907 is the
more conspicuous when contrasted with the warm and wide-spread
rejoicings called forth in the previous year by so comparatively
unimportant an occasion as the quarter-centenary of George Buchanan's
birth.
The contrast may be explained in part by the readiness of generous minds
to respond to the personal appeal which the achievements of great men,
dead or alive, always make to their affections, combined with the
public’s lack of interest in abstract questions. Other causes
contributing to the neglect of the bi-centenary of the Union might
perhaps be found, on one side of the Tweed, in the complacent
parochialism of a section of English public opinion, and, on the other
side, in a lingering feeling that the loss of nominal independence
suffered in 1707 by the cider and prouder monarchy calls for oblivion or
sorrow rather than for noisy celebrations.
Yet all such considerations are inadequate to account fully for the
strange and chilling apathy with which the mass of Britons, on both
sides of the Border, have responded to the gallant attempts made by a
few learned historians to arouse interest in the circumstances under
which, exactly two hundred years ago, Great Britain took its birth. A
partial explanation, it is here suggested, lies in the fact that the
discussions of the subject have ignored the broad constitutional
problems involved, dwelling instead on subordinate side issues or on
comparatively trivial matters of detail. Much has been said about plots
and intrigues, about the influence of individuals and the position of
parties prior to 1707, about differences of opinion on questions of
religion, politics, and finance during the negotiations, and about the
ultimate effects of the Union on Scottish trade, society, and literature
; but nothing, or next to nothing, has been said on the relations of the
Scottish Parliament to the Scottish king and, through him, to the
English ministers and the English Parliament. The instructive volume
before us, so admirable in many ways, the outcome of the patriotic
enterprise of the Editor of the Glasgow Herald, forms no real exception
to the general rule. In its pages, every aspect of the Union is
discussed, except the most essential. Here, the history of the Scottish
Parliament from 1307 is outlined by Mr. R. S. Rait in a few bright and
lucid pages. ‘The End of an Auld Sang’—an oft-told tale—-is told once
more by Mr. Andrew Lang, who in a second essay makes, upon slender and
inconclusive evidence, a serious charge against the Covenanters of the
western shires. The debates on the Act of Security are outlined by Dr.
James Mackinnon. Some of the ecclesiastical and personal aspects of the
Scottish Union, and a few points of comparison with the Irish Union, are
discussed by Mr. Law Mathieson. The industrial aspects fall to Mr. W. R.
Scott and the literary aspects to Mr. J. H. Millar. Some topics of
special local interest for Glasgow and Edinburgh respectively are
treated by Mr. Renwick and Dr. James Colville (who between them
represent Glasgow historical scholarship in this enterprise due to
Glasgow initiative). Two papers of unusual interest on ‘The English
Standpoint’ are contributed by Professor Lodge; while the text of the
Articles of Union (to which the Act for securing the Protestant religion
and Presbyterian Church government ought to have been appended)
concludes the volume. The result of the independent labours of so many
experts, each writing to a prescribed theme on which he is well
qualified to speak, thus lies before us in the form of a collection of
disconnected essays, lacking unity because no attempt has been made to
connect the various subordinate topics with the great central
constitutional movement. Yet the frame-work of government forms the
skeleton of the body politic; and it is impossible for the poetical
pathologist, without some knowledge of the anatomy of the figure, to
understand what parts are diseased or out of joint.
Professor Hume Brown, searching in his introductory chapter for ground
not already occupied by other contributors, might have found his
opportunity in this omission : but he has endeavoured to show instead
how the Union of the Parliaments has restored Scotland to the place of
weight in European politics which she enjoyed previous to 1603, but lost
at the Union of the Crowns. In what wav, ether than as an organic part
of Great Britain, Scotland has, since 1707, exercised an influence over
international affairs it is not easy to understand; but her impotence in
the councils of Europe at the close of the seventeenth century may be
accepted as an undoubted fact. If Professor Hume Brown had proceeded to
lay bare the causes of this impotence- -a task which perhaps no one in
Scotland was better fitted by historical insight and equipment to
accomplish—he would inevitably have been led to a discussion of those
constitutional phenomena which lay at the root of the movement. He has
not done so, however, and has explained neither the nature of the nexus
between the English Parliament and the common monarch, nor the
impossibility of Scotland, deprived as she was of a separate executive
head, pursuing any foreign policy of her own. As these constitutional
relations seem essential to a right understanding of the Union of the
Parliaments, alike as to its antecedents and its far-reaching results,
this article proposes to proceed to a short analysis of their leading
features.
With the results of the Revolution of 1688, an event which secured to
the English Whigs the final triumph of the principles of government they
had long struggled for, Scotland was bitterly disappointed. Why?
Briefly, because William might be compelled to serve one, but not two
masters; and the more helpless he found himself to defy the wishes of
the wealthier and stronger nation, the more completely was the weaker
nation entangled in his chains and dragged with him at the heels of the
English Parliament. The growth of parliamentary government in England
crushed out all possibility of parliamentary government :n Scotland.
Such a result had not been dreamed of by the patriots of either country
in the period between 1660 and 1688, when a consciousness of common aims
and interests, as well as a sense of common dangers, had still united
them in their struggles against a common enemy. If Charles II. had too
often regulated his policy on lines that opposed the aspirations of
patriotic Scotland, he had as frequently offended his English subjects;
if James II. had persecuted the Presbyterians of the north, he had also
plotted to overthrow Episcopacy in the south. Both kingdoms had suffered
from the same divine-right monarchy, and expected to benefit equally
from its overthrow.
When the Bill of Rights became law the English constitutionalists,
indeed, entered their promised land. Yet, with public opinion unsettled
at home and an invasion of Ireland pending, their position was insecure
sc long as Scotland delayed to acquiesce in the settlement of the Crown
upon William and Mary; and the Scots Estates might selfishly have
dictated the price of their consent, demanding exemption from the
operation of the Navigation Acts, or a closer union on terms of their
own prescribing. The leaders at Edinburgh showed that they were not
ignorant of the grave issues at stake when they passed, on 23rd April,
1689, an Act authorising the appointment of commissioners to treat of
union. On the following day the Scottish Crown was offered to William
and Mary on the conditions embodied in the Claim of Right. The letter
which made this offer expressed a desire ‘ that as both kingdoms are
united in one head and sovereign, so they may become one body politic,
one nation, to be represented in one Parliament.’ The Parliament at
Westminster, however, its immediate object now secured, took no steps to
meet these advances—advances, it must be owned, of a somewhat half
hearted kind, since the course suggested by Scottish prudence was
repugnant to Scottish pride. The golden opportunity had thus been lost;
and the events of the next two decades made it clear that the Estates at
Edinburgh, whether through pride, ignorance, or credulity, had committed
a tactical blunder in accepting the new ruler of England’s choice
without first safeguarding Scottish interests. The patriots of the north
who had shared the sufferings and the strivings of their political
friends across the Border reaped no share of the spoils of victory.
William of Orange, against his better judgment, was forced to trample
underfoot the liberties and aspirations of the subjects of his northern
kingdom ; and the key to his conduct towards Scotland must be sought in
English constitutional phenomena. William’s reign is notable, in the
eyes of students of political science, for the laying of the foundations
of that modern cabinet system, which is the practical guarantee of
liberty in most of the free countries and self-governing colonies of the
modern world. Politicians of the days of William and Anne, it is true,
were far from understanding the essential features involved; and what
they understood, displeased them. All the same, a distinct advance was
being made throughout these years towards the evolution of the
essentials of cabinet government, as we find them in the British
constitution of to-day—towards the control, that is, of the royal
prerogative by a small band of ministers united in adherence to a
definite political creed, owning the authority of a common leader, each
jointly responsible for the political acts of his fellows, and all by
the operation of the potent principle of ministerial responsibility
beneath the domination of the House of Commons.
Macaulay has recounted, once for all, the gradual steps by which
Parliament enslaved the Ling; how the Commons adopted a niggardly policy
of annual doles, enforced by a rigorous appropriation of supplies, and
audit of accounts ; how the leaders of the various parliamentary
factions, disunited in all else, were pet united in their determination
to curtail the perogatives of the Crown ; how William found it
impossible to procure funds for his French campaigns without the support
of the leading Whigs; how to please them he was forced to form his
famous unto Ministry, the earliest unambiguous anticipation of a modern
cabinet; how gradually the financial dram of the long-continued war,
combined with William’s attempts at independent action in concluding the
Partition Treaties, produced a Tory reaction that compelled him, in
1698, to dismiss Somers and other leading Whigs, and fill their places
from the ranks of the party he disliked. With William’s personal
feelings and bitter humiliation this article has no immediate concern,
except in their bearing on Scots affairs. It is evident, however, that
if the king had at Parliament’s dictation to choose his ministers from
among men he distrusted and disliked; if he was powerless to carry out
his most dearly-cherished schemes, or even at times to protect himself
from indignities and insults; if he was compelled by insular prejudice
to repay, with conspicuous ingratitude, the deep obligations that hound
him to his faithful Dutch troops; :n such circumstances, the wishes of
his Scottish subjects could not long prevail against the prejudices of
his English ministers.
It is true that a logical distinction might be drawn between the
separate prerogatives of the two Crowns; but in the field of politics
logical subtleties give way to practical requirements; and it was the
English House of Commons, not the Scots Estates, that regulated all
matters De Jure Regnt apvid Scotos. It is further true that the northern
country possessed separate ministers of her own. Even in its best days,
however, the Scots Privy Council had never rivalled the powers of its
English counterpart; while in the two decades that preceded the Union,
no appreciable influence was exercised over the destiny of Scotland by
the decision* of the Scots Privy Council as a whole, or of any inner
circle of that body sitting at Edinburgh. Where William’s ministers were
indifferent, his attitude towards northern affairs was directed by
Carstares or such other statesman as had gained the royal ear, while in
all matters of international importance the king of Scotland was
compelled to regulate Scots affairs according to the exigencies of
English party politics. Thus, under William of Orange, the ancient
kingdom whose independence had survived the attacks of Edward
Plantagenet and Oliver Cromwell, while still nominally tree and
independent, was practically in a worse position than any British
self-governing colony at the present day. The real centre of the
political life of the Dominion of Canada lies at Ottawa, and that of the
Commonwealth of Australia at Melbourne. The legislatures which meet at
these colonial capitals are much more than mere law-making assemblies,
for they exercise an active control over the colonial cabinets, the
selection of which is dictated by the lower chamber, and the members of
which are subject to the doctrine of ministerial responsibility.
Scotland, on the contrary, prior to 1707, was in matters of importance
governed from London, not from Edinburgh ; while such powers as remained
to the Scots Privy Council were by no means subject to the parliamentary
control of the Estates. North, as well as south of the Tweed,
ministerial responsibility meant the same thing— responsibility to the
Parliament that sat at Westminster. Even in the Transvaal, politically
dominated by the Boers, recently in rebellion against British
suzerainty, the earlier constitution framed by Mr. Lyttleton, which
conferred representative institutions without responsible government,
has been condemned and superseded as not sufficiently liberal. Yet
Scotland between 1660 and 1707, had to endure an executive government
which admitted no responsibility to the national legislative assembly.
It would be absurd, of course, to criticise the institutions of the
seventeenth century by the standards of the twentieth. Yet such
comparisons are Instructive; and it was specially galling to Scotsmen
that the seat of the executive authority should be gradually transferred
to a foreign capital at the very time when the principles of
self-government were taking firm root in England. In two respects at
least, defective constitutional liberty was a greater hardship to
pre-union Scotland than it would be to a modern British colony. While,
at the present day, the policy of the mother country towards its
colonies is always sympathetic, the English ministers of William and
Anne were hostile and contemptuous of Scottish prejudices. The very
proximity of the two kingdoms, on the other hand, in that intolerant
age, made it seem the more impossible to statesmen south of the Tweed to
allow independence of action to a neighbour steeped in hostile
traditions and with leanings towards the exiled Stuart race. Seton of
Pitmedden rightly said: ‘Two kingdoms subject to one Sovereign, having
different interests, the nearer these are one to another the greater
jealousy and emulation will be betwixt them.’
That the rage of Scotland was, to a. great extent, blind and unreasoning
rage affords no cause for wonder; for many irritating symptoms diverted
attention from the true seat of the disease. The Scottish lion, blind
with fury, knowing it was wounded, but realizing neither the nature nor
location of the wound, attacked such victims as chance flung in its
path—Captain Green and his unfortunate messmates of the Worcester among
the number. The root-causes of the discontent, if imperfectly diagnosed
in 1707, seem clear enough to-day; there may have been other subordinate
causes rendering an ultimate union likely, but all other necessities
flowed from the constitutional necessity. Scotland, it is true, after
1660, as a foreign land, was excluded from free trade with England and
the plantations. The incidence of the Navigation Acts had been cruelly
felt by the merchants of Leith and Aberdeen in the reign of Charles II.
Yet, if Scotsmen had remained as completely aliens in England, as were
the French or Dutch, they could not have reasonably complained. It was
different when they found themselves constitutionally bound to their
supercilious rivals, who were using the accumulated weight of the two
crowns to prevent Scotland making treaties for war or commerce with
other European powers. The friends of the Darien scheme may have been
selfish and unwise in the policy they expected William to adopt. Yet,
whether they were reasonable or the reverse was not the point; but
rather whether the national will or the king’s will should prevail in
Scots affairs. If, south of the Tweed, the Whigs had put in practice the
doctrine that sovereigns exist to serve the community, why should
Scotland be burdened with a king who (as in his dealings with the
Hamburg merchants) thwarted her dearest aspirations. Scotland, like the
American colonies before the war of independence, was treated in some
respects as though it were a dependency not of the British Crown, but of
the English Parliament. The status quo had become intolerable, and the
only question at the commencement of Queen Anne’s reign was as to the
form the inevitable change should take.
What new solutions were possible. Seton of Pitmedden in his famous
speech of 2nd November, 1706, clearly explained 'the three different
ways proposed for retrieving the languishing condition of this nation;
which are, That we continue under the same sovereign with England, with
limitations on his prerogative as king of Scotland; that the two
kingdoms be incorporated into one; or that they be entirely separated.’
To these three he subsequently added a fourth solution: the words
‘Federal Union,’ he explained, had ‘become very fashionable, and may be
handsomely fitted to delude unthinking people.’ To a brief discussion of
these various solutions we may now proceed.
(1) Complete separation, in these days of Jacobite activity and acute
trade rivalries, would have resulted in constant or intermittent warfare
between the kingdoms, if not in the conquest of the smaller by the
larger—alternatives equally repugnant to Scottish patriotism ;—while
from England’s point of view, it would have seemed intolerable to allow
a hostile Scotland, probably in alliance, as of old, with France, to
remain unconquered as a constant menace to her northern frontier.
Surely, to bring back the old unhappy days of the Anglo-Scottish wars
was an impossible solution.
(2) The scheme known as 'the I.imitations', pressed by Fletcher of
Saltoun, in season and out of season, upon the Estates, while conferring
the empty title of King of Scotland on the new sovereigns called to the
English throne by the Act of Settlement, sought to reduce their
independent powers to zero in all vital questions. On its purely
theoretic side, this arrangement had much to recommend it. No one of his
contemporaries, indeed, has shown so clear an insight into the real
nature of the evil as Fletcher did, when he declared, in one of his
fiery outbursts: ‘It is not the prerogatives of a king of Scotland would
diminish, but the prerogatives of English ministers over this nation.’
His suggested remedy, however, was open to serious practical objections.
So far as ‘the Limitations’ would have really secured an effective
control by the Estates over the royal prerogative, this would have
amounted to a transference of ‘sovereignty’ from the king to the
Scottish Parliament, and would have destroyed to that extent the bond of
unity with England. In so far, on the other hand, as the control of the
Estates proved incomplete, Scotland would have remained exposed, as
formerly, to the interference of foreigners in her affairs, with the
added evils and confusions consequent upon a divided ‘sovereignty.’ The
position of the monarch under such a scheme, upon either alternative,
would have been so full of danger and humiliation that no
self-respecting prince would have accepted it. Finally, England would
never willingly have acquiesced in an arrangement which brought added
responsibilities without adequate return.
(3) In explaining the disadvantages of a federal union, Seton of
Pitmedden, in the speech already quoted, showed astounding penetration.
After asking, among other searching questions, ‘whether there can be any
sure guarantee projected for the observance of the articles of a federal
compact, stipulated betwixt two nations, whereof the one is much
superior to the other in riches, numbers of people, and an extended
commerce’ he proceeds to show from history how the weaker of the two
kingdoms, united by such a compact, has invariably repudiated the
connection with the stronger, 'unless prevented by open force, or secret
influence on its government.’ To his two examples of Spain and Portugal,
Sweden and Denmark, it is now possible to make several striking
additions. Four important systems of government have been based, in
modern times, upon a federal or quasi-federal principle—those of the
United States of America; Switzerland; Austria-Hungary; Norway and
Sweden. In the two first named, the federal tie is generally admitted to
have proved successful; in the two latter it has failed conspicuously.
Norway, rebelling against a burden that had grown intolerable, renounced
in 1904 her allegiance to a monarch she respected, in order to free
herself from the hated supremacy of Sweden. Hungarian patriots, while
grinding beneath their heels Croatians, Serbs, Roumanians, and Slovaks,
chafe unceasingly against Austrian supremacy, complaining that Hungarian
interests and political ideals are systematically subordinated to those
of their uncongenial political yoke-fellows.
To which of these groups would a federal Anglo-Scotia, in 1707, have
corresponded the more closely? Would it have resembled a more or less
numerous group of cantons or states like the Republics of Switzerland
and North America—united under a federal legislature in which the
interest of each of the original members is so small as to be easily
neutralised by a combination of the others? Or would it rather have
resembled the dual monarchies, where a common executive head in one case
still compels, and in another has failed to compel, a smaller nation to
submit to the continuance of a hated tie? Such historical parallels,
conclusive as they are, are hardly needed to prove that in 1707, a
federal union, would have kept alive all the evils of the previous
regime, leaving Scotland powerless in the hands of English ministers. By
a process of exhaustion, it has thus been shown that the only possible
solution of the pressing constitutional problem, consistent both with
national interests and national pride, lay such a complete fusion of the
two nations on terms of equality, as would secure for Scotsmen a fair
share of influence in the organic life of the new nation; and make, at
the same time, adequate provision for preserving—so far as human
ingenuity could preserve them— her national church, administrative
machinery, and separate legal system. It is possible to ask, however,
whether in truth all these objects have been successfully and
permanently obtained.
It must be admitted, at least, that the mere fact of Scottish birth has
not prevented individuals from holding high office in every department
under the British Constitution, the office of Prime Minister not
excepted; while the most sanguine anticipations of commercial advantages
to be gained by Scotland from freedom of trade with England have been
surpassed. It may still be asked, however, to what extent the guarantees
of the Scottish Church and of the peculiar legal system, so jealously
regarded in the Union debates, have stood the test of time. If an
affirmative answer is here impossible, it is no slight on the
statesmanship of the framers of the Treaty of Union to say that they
failed to achieve what was logically impossible. A federal union, if
adopted, might like ‘the law of the Medes and Persians which altereth
not have permanently guaranteed existing institutions against attempts
at legislative interference; but in the debates in the Cockpit and
subsequently at Edinburgh, all idea of a union thus restricted was
deliberately abandoned. The fundamental postulate on which the entire
Treaty was built was that the Union should be absolute, complete, and
irreducible, and that both existing Parliaments must surrender all their
powers to a new Parliament, possessing legislative ‘soveirenty’ equally
over the laws and institutions of both kingdoms. To attempt to combine
with this postulate a legal (as opposed to a moral) guarantee that the
Presbyterian Church or any of the peculiar laws and institutions of
Scotland should remain perpetually unchanged, was like attempting to
reconcile the contradiction in terms underlying the mathematical quibble
which inquires what would happen if an irresistible force should meet an
immoveable mass. The new Parliament having been declared irresistible,
it followed that nothing could be inielable; while if any existing
institution had been rendered legally unchangeable, it would have
followed that as respects that institution at least, the Parliament was
not supreme. There might be and there was a moral obligation upon the
new legislature to respect the conditions of the Treaty, but such
obligation could not have been made legally binding, without
fundamentally altering the nature of the British Parliament as a
sovereign legislative body. It is true that in the years following the
Union, Scotland bitterly lamented the absence of legal guarantees, and
had good reason to charge the overwhelming English majorities at
Westminster with breach of faith in violating the spirit of the Treaty.
It is true, further, that the Union would never have been effected, if
the waverers at Edinburgh had suspected for one moment, when the crucial
votes were taken, that the stipulated terms would not be scrupulously
observed down to the minutest item.
It is necessary in this connection, however, to distinguish between
those national institutions which the Act of Union deliberately left to
the operation of the legislative supremacy of the British Parliament,
and those others which it attempted, however illogically, to render
permanent and inviolable, (1) Scotland stipulated to preserve her
separate system of jurisprudence; but here there was no thought to
stereotype the entire body of the existing laws. That would have been to
turn a progressive Scotland into a second China. By the 18th Article all
laws not inconsistent with the Treaty, were to remain in force ‘but
alterable by the Parliament of Great Britain.’ Well meaning directions
were added—possessing, of course, no legally binding authority—as to the
way in which that Parliament ought to use these powers. Laws concerning
‘public right, policy, and civil government’ should be uniform
throughout the realm, while those concerning private right should be
altered only for the utility of the subject of Scotland. The continuance
of a separate Privy Council for Scotland was left entirely to the
discretion of Queen Anne and her successors in Parliament by the 19th
Article, the terms of which rather suggest that its discontinuance would
be the more natural course. It was, therefore, no hardship that an Act
was passed in the very year of the Union, exercising these powers of
abolition. Nor was it a breach of faith that the House of Lords should
hear appeals from the Court of Session and the Court of Justiciary,
since in the Union debates the Upper House was systematically described
as 'the only sovereign indicature of Britain, with equal authority over
both kingdoms. It was a grievance, however, although not a legal one,
that this right of review was sometimes influenced by political bias as
it undoubtedly was in Greenshield’s case, the fate of which was really
determined by the Tory triumph, consequent upon the trial of Dr.
Sacheverell.
(2) In two important matters at least, when the Scots commissioners
consented to the Union, they intended that Scottish institutions should
remain inviolable for ever. The Presbyterian Church was to remain intact
both under the original Articles of Union and also in terms of the
special Act passed for its protection; while in Defoe’s words, ‘The
Courts of Justice, and the general form of administration, such as
session, justiciary, and all other Courts, were to remain in force for
ever.’ The judicial system, thus secured by a law that was to he
incapable of repeal, included the various heritable jurisdictions, which
chained Scotland to the feudal past. Defoe, with his usual prescience,
regretted that the continued existence of these last had not been left
for Parliament to determine. That was not done, however; and it is
therefore clear that the Act abolishing military tenures, which swept
these anomalies away in 1747, was, however desirable, a deliberate
breach of the terms of Union.
A more emphatic: example of the incompatibility of parliamentary
sovereignty with the stipulations of the Treaty of Union had been
already afforded by three laws passed in 1712. The Toleration Act, the
Act Restoring Patronage, and the Christmas Observance Act, whether wise
or unwise in themselves, showed that the national sentiment of Scotland
was subject to the over-ruling power of Westminster, and that this power
might sometimes be exercised in a manner that was purely vexatious. It
was bitterly realized that bigoted Episcopalian majorities in both
Houses of Parliament ha the legal power, if they chose to exercise it,
of overturning the Presbyterian form of church government in Scotland in
spite of express stipulations to the contrary in the Treaty itself, and
in the Act specially passed for its protection.
Such incidents illustrate the adequacy of the precautions taken in 1707
considered as legal guarantees of the permanency of existing
institutions. They fall far short, however, of proving the Union a
mistake. The incorporation of the two nations with each other, if
accepted at all, had to be accepted by both sides, with all the faults
inherent in the qualities of the measure. Scotland could not reasonably
expect to retain all the advantages of separation while gaining in
addition those attendant upon union. She surrendered her independence
exactly as England did. In one respect, however, she found herself in
worse case than England, since she accepted the domination of a
legislative assembly in which her own representatives would have found
themselves in a hopeless minority, if divisions had taken place on
national as opposed to party lines. This was the risk she had to run—the
price she paid for the Union, With the passage of two centuries these
dangers and defects have disappeared from view, while the compensating
advantages have become the more conspicuous. The recurrence of undue
interference on the part of English majorities with exclusively Scottish
affairs has been minimized, if not entirely obviated, with the growth of
a tolerant spirit in politics and religion; while a feeling of mutual
participation in the new and wider nationality—not incompatible with a
sincere Scottish or local English patriotism— has done much towards
consolidating the Union.
Time, then, has justified the framers of the Treaty. Scottish national
institutions were protected in so far as was possible or desirable, and
the successful termination of the negotiations in 1707 must be viewed as
a triumph of Scottish diplomacy. At a time when Englishmen looked upon
Scotland and Scotsmen with hatred and contempt, or at least with a
half-contemptuous indifference—at a time when the mass of Englishmen
were apathetic or antagonistic to the question of a closer union—it was
surely a triumph for Scotland first to awaken English statesmen to a due
sense of the urgency of the problem by passing the Act of Security—‘that
masterpiece of policy,’ as Defoe aptly terms it, and then to extort
terms of perfect equality on lines which were strictly fair, if not
generous, and which entirely satisfied the quick pride of reasonable
Scotsmen, by ensuring the construction of a stable basis on which
national prosperity, to an extent undreamed of at the time, was
afterwards to be built.
If Scotland, in 1707, renounced for ever her ancient constitution along
with her continued existence as an independent state—an apparent
blessing which pressure of circumstances had turned to an actual
curse—she gained in return an honourable share in the life of Great
Britain, and the right to exercise her fair measure of control in
shaping the destinies of the British Empire— a right of which her sons
have not been slow to take advantage.
Wm. S. McKechnie.
The History of the Union between
England and Scotland
By Daniel De Foe (1786) (pdf)
This is a very
interesting history where the author was actually involved on the ground
in both Scotland and England during the negotiations. The only drawback
to this book is that at the time of writing the letter f was used
instead of the letter s and so it makes it a wee bit challenging to
read. |