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)