PREFACE
In 1603 James VI. of
Scotland succeeded on the death of Elizabeth to the English crown as
James I. of England. Hence arose the so-called union of Crowns. Under
this union the King of England was the same person as the King of
Scotland. But, as King of England, he had, constitutionally, no
authority in Scotland, and as King of Scotland, he had no authority in
England. Hence it resulted that no law passed by the English Parliament
had operation in Scotland, and no law passed by the Scottish Parliament
had operation in England. In 1707 was passed? first by the Parliament of
Scotland, and then by the Parliament of England, the Act of Union. This
statute abolished the separate Parliament of England and also the
separate Parliament of Scotland, and brought into existence the
Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and, from a legal
point of view, the United Kingdom of Great Britain. Hence the
Parliament of Great Britain had, after the Union, authority to legislate
for every part of Great Britain and for every country which had
immediately before the
Union been subject either to the King of England or to the King of
Scotland, or, to use a modem expression, for every part of the British
Empire.
This essay is concerned in one way or another wholly with the Act of
Union, and treats of (1) the Scottish parliamentary government from 1603
to 1707; (2) the passing of the Act of Union, 1703-1707; (3) the results
of the Act of Union, 1707-1832.
This book, though it deals, from different points of view, with the
Union between England and Scotland, is not in strictness a work of
history; it is rather an attempt to comment upon the nature and the
results of a great legal or political transaction. It contains Thoughts
upon the Act of Union, but it does not profess to be a history of
Scotland, even during the period with which these Thoughts are specially
concerned. This period may broadly be described as the years from 1603
to 1707, or, if we take the widest possible view, from 1603 to 1832.
From the special character and the limited scope of these Thoughts upon
the Act of Union flow several results which may conveniently be here
noted.
In reading this essay it must in the first place be borne in mind that
there is an essential difference between the work of a writer who
comments upon and explains (as in this essay) the gradual development of
the Union between England and Scotland, the passing of the Act of Union,
its character and its results, and the work of an historian who intends
to tell the story of Scotland, even during the very same years with
which this essay is mainly concerned (1603-1707). Such a commentator
must on the one hand of necessity emphasise some matters or events with
which the historian of Scotland is but slightly, or secondarily,
concerned. Thus the commentator must of necessity emphasise the points
of likeness, and still more the points of unlikeness, between the
Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland. He must also lay
the strongest emphasis upon the essential difference between the
parliamentary constitution of Scotland in 1603 and the parliamentary
constitution of Scotland in 1690. Nor can he fail to examine with care
the position and the influence of the committee known as the Lords of
the Articles. For all these things are of vital importance for the
understanding either of the almost insuperable difficulty up to 1703 of
passing an Act of Union or the possibility of passing it in 1707. But
some of these matters, and especially the elaborate comparison and
contrast between the Parliament of England and the Parliament of
Scotland, only in a secondary degree concern the historian of Scotland.
Such a commentator, on the other hand, is relieved from the careful
examination of some matters which are of primary importance to the
Scottish historian. He may rightly omit the careful investigation of the
steps by which the anomalous authority of the Lords of the Articles came
into existence, though such an examination is from an antiquarian or
merely historical point of view of first-rate interest and importance.
So again our commentator is rightly dispensed from passing judgement on
the strange hesitations or, as foes would say, tergiversations of the
Duke of Hamilton, which contributed as much as did the parliamentary
skill of the Duke of Queensberry towards the passing of the Act of
Union. For the personal motives by which a Scottish statesman may have
been actuated in opposing, or sometimes in supporting, the Act have in
themselves little importance as regards the growth or the understanding
of the Act of Union, except in so far as they may occasionally give
insight into the state of public opinion during a political crisis in
which the Duke of Hamilton and others played a conspicuous part.
In the next place, from the scope of this essay it will soon appear to
any thoughtful reader that it is a work not of research but, in the main
at least, of inference. This distinction is a real one, though it is
sometimes overlooked. An author who tries to ascertain new, important,
or startling facts about the history of Scotland ought to possess rare
powers not only of historical investigation but of historical narrative,
so that he may be able to make visible to all students the results of
the discoveries made by his industry and insight. These are the
legitimate rewards of research when combined—which it sometimes is
not—with a gift for impressive narrative. A commentator on the Act of
Union, on the other hand, has neither the aim nor the claim to reveal
new or unknown facts. His object is to take the ordinary facts as to the
Act of Union which are the common knowledge obtained by the labours of
men devoted to historical research, and, assuming these facts to be in
the main established, to draw from them more or less obvious inferences
which may often escape the attention both of Scotsmen and Englishmen,
but especially of Englishmen, who have become so accustomed to the
political and the moral unity of every part of Great Britain as never to
have known, or else to have forgotten entirely, the labour, the
forethought, the skill, and the wisdom through which the inhabitants of
the south and of the north of the British Isles, who had been for
centuries bitter enemies, were at last and slowly blended into the one
united Kingdom of Great Britain.
It is, lastly, plain that such success as may be attained in the attempt
to lay before the British public thoughts on the Union must, at bottom,
depend upon the labours of men who for the last sixty years and more
have investigated with infinite care the many different and important
aspects of Scottish history, and who have thrown year by year more and
more light on the parliamentary history of Scotland both up to and after
the passing of the Act of Union. On the facts established by this
patriotic and successful effort the commentary put forward in this essay
depends.
It is here both a pleasure and a duty to acknowledge the infinite help
given in the preparation of this book by friendly communications, by men
competent to speak—one of them, alas, is now for ever silent—with
special authority as to different subjects on which these Thoughts at
times touch. We are specially indebted to the late Professor Hume Brown,
Historiographer Royal for Scotland; to Professors J. H. Millar and R. K.
Hannay, of the University of Edinburgh; to Professor William L.
Davidson, of the University of Aberdeen; to Dr. C. H. Firth, Regius
Professor of Modern History at Oxford; and to Professor J. Swift
MacNeill.
We have also pleasure in thanking the owners of the Quarterly Review and
of the Scottish Historical Review for allowing the use, in this Essay,
of Thoughts on the Parliament of Scotland, and on the General Assembly
of the Church of Scotland under the Constitution of 1690, by A. V.
Dicey, which have already appeared in these reviews.
A. V. DICEY.
ROBERT S. RAIT.
December 1919.
Thoughts on the Union between England & Scotland (pdf) |