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THE most impressive
spectacle in history is not the march of mighty armies led by a
conqueror and treading down all opposition under the iron heel of
War, but a gallant people standing on the line of right within its
own borders and there heroically defending its firesides and its
institutions of civil and religious freedom against overwhelming
numbers. Such was the attitude of Scotland, and such the sublime
spectacle of her intrepid race, through the long wasting wars that
reddened all her southern borders and at times extinguished many of
her noblest families. In all history it would be difficult to find a
more enduring and heroic people.
The present
population of Scotland is upward of three millions. At the date of
the final reunion and incorporation with England, near the opening
of the eighteenth century, the whole Scottish people did not exceed
one million. In all probability there had been no preceding; period
during the long eventful history in which the number of inhabitants
was not considerably less than a million. Ten centuries of bloody,
desolating warfare had often decimated the race and cut short
illustrious lines. Less than two centuries of peaceful agriculture,
manufacture and commerce, under the genial sway of science,
literature, religion, rudimental education, artistic culture,
philosophical research and free constitutional government, have been
sufficient to treble the home-population even while an adventurous
foreign emigration has been carrying its uncounted myriads abroad to
people every continent and every island of the ocean with Scotsmen.
The grandest lesson of modern history—that peace, not war, is the
true policy of nations, the ars alrtiaum of all human progress—was
never more strikingly illustrated than it has been in the history of
Scotland.
Since the Union of
1707, Scotland has constituted an integral portion of the British
empire, having voluntarily yielded up her separate nationality after
defending it with gallant success for more than a thousand years. In
the early spring of 1603, on the death of Queen Elizabeth, James VI.
of Scotland, uniting in himself the royal titles to the crowns of
both kingdoms, had quietly ascended the English throne. Edinburgh
lost her royal court, but for a hundred years longer Scotland was
still in possession of her Parliament and her independence, the
joint-sovereign reigning over the two still separate kingdoms. But
in the year 1706 the Scottish Parliament met for the last time. The
members, at the opening, rode, as was the custom, in slow and solemn
procession up the old Canongate of Edinburgh from Holyrood Palace to
the Parliament-house. The act of union was passed by the two
Parliaments, and on the 1st of May in the year following the two
rival kingdoms became one; the court was transferred to London, and
the government merged into the one Parliament of Great Britain. The
two nations in the long course of their history had met each other
in three hundred and fourteen pitched battles, and had sacrificed
more than a million of men as brave as ever wielded claymore, sword
or battle-axe. Against superior numbers and amidst unparalleled
disasters the lesser realm had fearlessly maintained its
independence from the days of Kenneth McAlpine to those of Robert
Bruce, and from Bruce down to the last of the Stuart pretenders.
When, however, the Scottish people at last yielded to the inexorable
logic of events and accepted the situation, they went into the Union
with a brilliant record and an unsullied escutcheon. They had
covered themselves with glory (at times nothing else had been left
to cover with), and they carried with them as the best prestige for
the future the grandest of all remembrances—the remembrance of a
heroic national history. The Scot had now become a North Briton, but
Scotland was living Scotland still.
"Deep-graven on her
breast she wore
The names of all her valiant dead,
And with the great inscription felt
As Douglas with De Bruce's heart—
That she was still a conqueror."
The fundamental
principle of the union with England was that of a complete
incorporation of the two nationalities in one government under one
sovereign head and one representative Parliament, with equal rights
and privileges for the people and a proportionate burden of the
common taxation. The conditions of the problem then settled and the
greatness of that settlement are well stated in the following
sentences from Charles Knight's History of England: "The complete
union of two independent nations, to be brought about by common
consent and the terms to be settled as in a commercial partnership,
was an event which seems natural and easy when we look to the
geographical position of the two nations and to the circumstance
that they had been partially united for a century under six
sovereigns wearing the crown of each kingdom. But when we look to
the long-standing jealousies of the two nations, their sensitive
assertion of ancient superiority, the usual haughty condescension of
the wealthier country, the sturdy pride of the poorer, the ignorance
of the bulk of each people of the true character of the other, the
differences of the prevailing forms of religion, the more essential
differences of laws and their modes of administration,—we may
consider the completion of this union as one of the greatest
achievements of statesmanship."
It was, in fact, an
-admirable adjustment of all the old grievances and a fitting close
to the feuds and animosities, inherited from generation to
generation, which had kept the neighboring kingdoms in perpetual
strife. If they had continued to fight each other to the present
day, they could not have received an adjustment more honorable and
advantageous to both parties. The weaker kingdom lost nothing by
becoming an integral part of a greater kingdom, and the greater lost
nothing, but gained much, by uniting its destiny with a powerful
race that should henceforward contribute its full share to the
national greatness. The Scot only relinquished a smaller for a more
enlarged and permanent independence. Ile found a more solid and
enduring basis for that national independence and that
constitutional liberty in defence of which he had so often drawn the
sword. There could have been no better, nobler termination of the
long and bloody conflict, lie had, indeed, gained all for which he
had ever fought.
The royal race of his
native land.—that race which in the person of Bruce had struggled so
hard to retain its independent throne—was now upon a greater throne,
the throne of United Britain. That small and often turbulent
Parliament of his ancient capital had ceased only to give place to
another and more powerful Parliament of the united nation, of which
he was to be a constituent member, and of which the Scottish people,
like the English, were to be independent electors. The lesser
nationality was not lost, but merged into the greater. The people
who could look back through a long line of heroes never quailing
before the face of battle surrendered no dignity by a voluntary
union into which they carried such a history.
It was a union not
easily effected. In all probability, it could never have been
accomplished except by those peculiar circumstances which gradually
prepared and at last reconciled the two divergent and conflicting
nationalities. The cost of the preparation had been immense. To the
last there were those in the smaller realm who stoutly resisted what
seemed an unnatural connection. They felt that the knell of
Scotland's glory had sounded. The union, however, once effected,
soon demonstrated the wisdom of its policy. The success of it was
its magnificent vindication. The problem was plain enough when the
overruling providence of God had once solved it by showing how much
better it was for two powerful races shut up on a narrow island,
with no natural boundary between them, to dwell in the close and
peaceful bonds of a great national compact than to be for ever
wasting each other's strength by interminable bloody wars. Under
such circumstances the good of the one was the highest good of the
other, and whatever glory either could have attained alone was far
more than doubled by the higher glory of one great united nation.
Probably no union in all history has proved more beneficial to the
contracting parties or become more close and indissoluble. |
