verse interests, diverse tendencies, diverse in- | so well accustomed to see conquered, that it stitutions, and the elements of old feud smoul- scarcely suggests itself to the British mind. When dering underneath their show of reciprocal the two commissions had to come together and attachment. There could hardly, in fact, have fuse their respective unanimities into a common conclusion, the difficulty became far more formibeen a more difficult problem than that which dable and universal. But then it was overcome, devolved upon the two Commissions-the and the conclusions were mutually and unanione consisting of thirty-one Englishmen, the mously adopted, then each commission had to go other of thirty-one Scotchmen-who, in 1706, to its tumultuous popular Legislature, to carry were appointed by the Crown to go through the whole through without any material injury or the preliminary labour of discussing and set- alteration; for, if, by any of the accidents to tling the terms on which these two nations, which popular assemblies are liable, an adverse the one of six millions of souls, the other of vote had occurred, ei her in England or Scotland, on any important article, inextricable confusion, less than one million, would consent to unite involving the whole project in imminent peril, themselves into one body-politic. Mr. Burton must have arisen. Nor was it until each of the thus described the difficulty of the problem :- commissions carried the joint labours of the whole, untouched in their vital elements, through these two fiery ordeals, at a distance from each other, conflicting in feelings and in interests, and looking on each other as natural enemies-that the measure could be considered in the haven of safety." "Small communities, thrown together in natural clusters, had, in primitive states of society, been known to come together by a sort of natural cohesion, like the Amphyctionies of Greece, the Swiss cantons, and, it may be said, the Saxon communities of England. Among full-grown European states, unions and fusions had been brought about by conquest, absorption, and the various natural operations by which communities, destitute of civil liberty, or not embued with strong feelings of nationality, become amalgamated. But two nations uniting together by a bond of partnership, representing a common consent, was a new event in political history. If those continental nations which had been for centuries ac Difficult as was the task udertaken by the two commissions, it was brought to a successful termination in a singularly short space of time. The commissioners met at Whitehall on the 16th of April 1706, began business on the 22d of that month, and held their last sitting on the 23d of July, having, in a series of some sixty sittings, discussed one by one, a great variety of points, and minuted in formal terms their ultimate agreement upon each. The articles, the tenor of which was still kept a profound secret from the public, were drawn up in form, signed by the commissioners, and presented to Her Majesty. What remained was to carry them through the two Legisla customed to see annexations, partitions, and the It was judiciously resolved to pass consolidation of two arbitrary governments, the them through the Scottish Parliament first. more powerful would have dictated and the other This Parliament met on the 3d of October, obeyed. At all events, however nearly the two and the debate on the proposed union began on the 12th. After a series of discussions powers might have approached to an equality, all would have been privately arranged in official ca- of unexampled fierceness, in which Lord Belbinets, and the people would have been made ac- haven, Fletcher of Saltoun, and the other orquainted with the terms of union only by seeing ators who were opposed to the Union, were them gradually developed in the new arrange-backed in their opposition by formidable riots ments of the joint government. In the union, however, of two constitutional states, each sensitively jealous in its own peculiar way, nothing beyond the initial steps could safely be kept secret. The whole complex operation of arrangement had to go on in the face of the world; and, in contemplating all the unanimities and acquies excited and sometimes stormy public, he would certainly have seemed the safest prophet who predicted a speedy shipwreck to the project. Let us just cast a glance at the varied suffrages which the whole system of union, and each clause of it, required as the preliminaries of final adoption. Each commission consisted of several men of different ranks, opinions, tastes, and interests, whom nothing but a strong sense of duty could bring to the necessary unanimity on a string of complieated constitutional questions. This was a difficulty, however, which in party operations we are cences that must be reached in the midst of an of the Edinburgh populace, and by petitions But bri lish. The cruel injustice of the government through its representatives, ratified the Union. | tablished was particularly agreeable to the The assent of the English Parliament was not Scotch, the development of whose commerce long wanting. It had opened its sessions on had greatly suffered of late years by the prothe 3d of December; and on the 28th of Ja-hibitory and monopolizing policy of the Engnuary, the Queen in person, announced to the assembled Lords and Commons what had been done in the Scottish Parliament; on the 8th of February, the articles passed the House of Commons after a discussion of four days; on the 27th of the same month, the sanction of the House of Lords was added; and on the 6th of March, the Bill received the royal signature. The Union of the two kingdoms thus consummated, came into effect on the first day of May, on which day the first Parliament of Great Britain met. of William III. in the matter of the Scottish colony in Darien was still fresh in the national recollection; and, as late as 1704, the English Legislature had retaliated on the Scottish Parliament, for an Act settling the succession to the Scottish Crown in a different line from that in which the English succession was fixed, by a law declaring the Scotch to be aliens, and prohibiting the importation of cattle, sheep, and coal from that country. There can be no doubt that a Commercial Union alone-or a union on the simple basis of freetrade between the two countries, other things remaining the same-would have been acceptable to the entire body of the Scottish people. What they, or at least a large portion of them objected to, was that this union should be accompanied by a Legislative Union. But on this point the English were resolute. If the power of England to damage Scotland lay in the injuries she could inflict on Scottish trade, the power of Scotland, on the other hand, to damage England, lay far more ex The Treaty of Union between England and Scotland, as it may be now read in collections of public documents, is a singular jumble of provisions, on a variety of matters, great and small, from the question of the Union itself, to that of the consequent modification of the Scottish duties on salt, all expressed in the same cool prosaic, business-like language. Probably in no other part of the world would so important an event have been registered in a document so plain and unenthusiastic. The Treaty consists in all of twenty-five articles, some brief, and others rather long and com-pressly in the liberty which the Northern kingplicated. An analysis of these articles shews that the Commissioners had performed their task thoroughly, and in a practical, painstaking spirit,quite sensible on the one hand, of the necessity and advantage of a Union of the kingdoms; and quite aware on the other, of the numerous points of difficulty which the social differences between the two kingdoms made it essential to take into account. On the whole it may be said, that the effect of the Treaty was twofold-first, to specify certain respects in which the two kingdoms should be assimilated; and secondly, to specify certain other respects in which there should be no assimilation, but each should remain distinct as before. This was exactly what the circumstances of the case would have suggest ed as necessary in such a treaty. The Union, as established by the Treaty, was of two kinds-it was both a Commercial Union and a Legislative Union. All the articles that are positive in their purport, may be referred to one or other of these heads. By the fourth article, it was provided-and all other articles confirmed the provision in special points-that all the subjects of the United Kingdom should have full freedom of intercourse with all places within the kingdom or in the colonies, with the same privileges and the same drawbacks; and, in general, that there should be a complete exchange and intercommunication of commercial rights between the two nations. The Commercial Union thus es dom possessed, by the fact of her separate Legislature, to act as a disturbing force in the general career of the island, more especially in the matter of the royal succession. Hence while the idea of a Commercial Union came from the Scottish side, and was even unacceptable in itself to the English, the idea of a legislative or "incorporating" Union, as the Scotch called it, belonged rather to the English side, and went sorely against the Scottish grain. Nevertheless, the legislative union was also carried-the English resolutely insisting on this as the price of that commercial union which they regarded as a concession on their part. By the third article of the Union, it was enacted, that, whereas till that time there had been two legislative bodies in the island-the English Parliament, with its two Houses of Lords and Commons, sitting in London, and legislating for England; and the Scottish Parliament, or Convention of the Three Scottish Estates, of the nobles, the lesser barons our country gentry, and the burgesses, sitting in Edinburgh, and legislating for Scotland-there should thenceforth be but one Parliament for the whole island, to be styled the Parliament of Great Britain, and to hold its sittings in London. Nominally, of course, both the old Parliaments were superseded by this process of consolidation. Practically, however, the change was simply the abolition of the Scottish Parliament, or its absorption by the English. A slight ef fort was, indeed, made, while the Treaty was in course of preparation, to secure an article providing that every third session of the general British Parliament should be held in Edinburgh. The proposals seems to have been scouted at once, for it makes hardly any figure in the minutes of the commissioners. A more serious matter with them seems to have been the proportion of representation which Scotland, on parting with her territorial autonomy, should receive in the general or London Parliament. As adjusted in several Articles in the completed Treaty, this matter was decided by the admission of sixteen representative Scottish Peers to the British House of Lords, and of forty-five representatives of Scottish shires and boroughs (thirty for the shires, and fifteen for the boroughs) to the British House of Commons. And so, as regarded the ancient Parliament of Scotland, "there was an end of an auld sang;' and there was wailing in the High Street of Edinburgh. While the Treaty thus accomplished to the fullest extent a commercial and legislative union of the two ancient nationalities, it tried also to specify the limits of the Union, by enumerating certain particulars in which the two countries were to remain separate as before. First and most emphatic of all, was a reservation to Scotland of her entire ecclesiastical independence, and of her Presbyterian form of church government as administered by general assemblies, synods, presbyteries, and kirk-sessions. Indeed this topic had been, from the first, formally excluded from the whole discussion, the commissioners being relieved of the necessity of even referring to it. While the negotiations for the Union were going on, a special act, called an Act of Security, had been passed by the Scottish Parliament, ordaining in as stringent terms as zeal and ingenuity could devise, that the Presbyterian form of church government should remain for ever unalterable, as the only government of the church within the kingdom of Scotland; and this Act was transferred whole into the Treaty of Union, so as to become part and parcel of it. On some other points the reservations were nearly as strict in intention, though less exact in form. Thus, the 18th article provided, that all laws in use in Scotland, not actually repealed by the Treaty, should remain in force as before; alterable, however, by the British Parliament as circumstances might require, with this difference-"that the laws which concern public right, policy, and civil government may be made the same throughout the whole united kingdom; but that no alteration be made in laws which concern private right, except for evident utility of the subjects within Scotland." The 19th Article guarantees the judicial independence of Scotland by the preservation of her separate Courts of Session, Justiciary, and Admiralty, &c.; it also provided for the establishment of a Scottish Court of Exchequer; and it anthorizes the Crown to continue a separate Privy Council for Scotland. The 20th Article, in like manner reserves to their owners all heritable offices and jurisdictions. It was also provided that, while the coinage of the two kingdoms should be assimilated, there should still be a separate Scottish mint; and that the Scottish records and regalia should remain within the Scottish territory. It is clear, as Mr. Burton observes, that some of these reservations—as, for example, that of Scottish heritable jurisdictions-were made less for their own sakes, or from an idea that it would be possible to tie up the hands of the supreme Legislature from making such alterations on the law and practice of Scotland as time and the progress of jurisprudential science might suggest, than froin a desire to make the Union as palatable as possible at the moment to the people of Scotland, and to record a useful protest against wanton innovations on Scottish procedure for the mere sake of conformity to England. Still it is clear, that the Scottish Commissioners and Parliament had it in view by these reservations, to reduce the union of the two countries to the minimum compatible with the great fact that Scotland had parted with her legislative autonomy. Foreseeing that the general Legislature of the island would gradually make changes in the state of society and the institutions north of the Tweed, they put a mark, as it were, on those items of Scottish tradition and civilization which were to be dealt with most gently. On one institution they put a mark equivalent to a curse. upon whosoever should dare to tamper with it. This was the Scottish Church. In other cases, as, for example, in the case of the Scottish judicial system, and the existing body of Scottish laws-they only, as it were, prayed forbearance; but in the case of the Scottish Church they took care to let it be known that innovation was to be beyond the power of even the general British Legislature, and that any attempt at such innovation on the part of that Legislature, would be, ipso facto, a dissolution of the Union. If the Union with Scotland found opponents in England, the union with England roused a far more vehement opposition in Scotland. The prevailing state of feeling among the Anti-Unionists in Scotland (and, notwithstanding what Mr. Burton says, they seem to have formed the majority of the Scottish people) is represented in the speech of Lord Belhaven, the leader of the Scottish opposition, on the motion to pass the first Article of the Treaty through the Scottish Parliament. This speech is the most splendid specimen of Scottish political oratory that has been handed down to us from these times. Despite the tinge of pedantry which runs through the style, Englishmen and Americans have recognized it as a masterpiece, and bound it up in the same volume with select orations of Chatham, and Fox, and Burke, and Henry, and Webster; while Scotchmen as they read it, though they smile at its exaggerations, which time has made apparent, feel their hearts stirred as by the sound of a trumpet. The following is an extract: "I think I see a free and independent kingdom delivering up that which all the world hath been fighting for since the days of Nimrod; yea, that for which most of all the empires, kingdoms, states, principalities, and dukedoms of Europe are at this time engaged in the most bloody and cruel wars-to wit, a power to manage their own affairs by themselves, without the assistance and counsel of any other. I think I see a National Church, founded upon a rock, secured by a claim of right, hedged and fenced about by the strictest and most pointed legal sanctions that sovereignty could contrive, voluntarily descending into a plain, upon an equal level with Jews, Papists, Socinians, Armenians, Anabaptists, and other sectaries. I think I see the noble and honourable Peerage of Scotland, whose valiant predecessors led armies against their enemies upon their own proper charges and expenses, now divested of their followers and vassalages, and put upon such an equal footing with their vassals, that I think I see a petty English exciseman receive more homage and respect than what was paid formerly to their quondam Maccalamores. I think I see the present peers of Scotland, whose noble ancestors conquered provinces, overran countries, reduced and subjugated towns and fortified places, exacted tribute through the greatest part of England, now walking in the Court of Requests, like so many English attorneys; laying aside their walking swords, when in company with the English peers, lest their self-defence should be found murder. I think I see the honourable Estate of Barons, the bold assertors of the nation's rights and liberties in the worst times, now setting a watch upon their lips, and a guard upon their tongues, lest they be found guilty of scandalum magnatum, a speaking evil of dignities. I think I see the royal state of Burghers walking their desolate streets, hanging down their heads under disappointments, wormed out of all the branches of their old trade, uncertain what hand to turn to, necessitated to become 'prentices to their unkind neighbours; and yet after all, finding their trade so fortified by companies, and secured by prescriptions, that they despair of any success therein. I think I see our learned Judges laying aside their pratiques and decisions; studying the common law of England; gravelled with certioraris, nisi priuses, writs of error, verdicts, injunc tions, demurrers, &c.; and frightened with appeals and avocations, because of the new regulations and rectifications they may meet with. I think I learn the plantation-trade abroad, or at home see the valiant and gallant soldiery either sent to petitioning for a small subsistence, as a reward of their honourable exploits, while their old corps are broken, the common soldiers left to beg, and the youngest English corps kept standing. I think I see the honest, industrious tradesman loaded with new taxes and impositions, disappointed of the equivalents, drinking water in place of ale, eating his saltless pottage, petitionanswered by counter-petitions. In short, I think ing for encouragement to his manufactures, and I see the laborious ploughman, with his corn spoiling upon his hands for want of sale, cursing the day of his birth, dreading the expenses of his burial, and uncertain whether to marry or do worse. If our posterity, after we are all dead and gone, shall find themselves under an ill made bargain, and shall have recourse to our records for the names of the managers who made that treaty by which they have suffered so much, they will certainly exclaim, 'Our nation must have been reduced to the last extremity at the time of this Treaty! All our great chieftains, all our noble peers, who once defended the rights and liberties of the nation, must have been killed and lying dead on the bed of honour, before the nation could ever condescend to such mean contemptible terms! Where were the great men of the noble families-the Stewarts, Hamiltons, Grahams, Campbells, Johnstons, Murrays, Homes, Kers? Where were the two great officers of the Crown-the Constable and the Marischal of Scotland? Certainly, all were extinguished! And now we are slaves for ever! But the English records-how they will make their posterity reverence the names of those illustrious men who made that Treaty, and for ever brought under those fierce, warlike, and troublesom neighbours, who had struggled so long for independency; shed the best blood of their nation; and reduced a considerable part of their country to become waste and desolate! I see the English constitution remaining firm-the same two Houses of Parliament; the same taxes, customs, and excise; the same trade in companies; the same municipal laws-while all ours are either subjected to new regulations, or annihilated for ever. And for what? Only that we may have the honour to pay their old debts; and may have some few persons present in their Parliament as witnesses to the validity of the deed, when they are pleased to contract more!" Never, perhaps, were prognostications, made in an honest spirit, so signally falsified by results. Lord Marchmont, the leader of the Unionist party, was nearer the truth than he was himself aware, when, in reply to the orator's predictions, he quoted the one brief saying, "Behold he dreamed; but, lo, when he awoke, he found it was a dream." Whatever may have been England's gain from the Union, the gain of Scotland has been immense. To enumerate the advantages that have occurred to Scotland from the Union would be to tell for the hundredth time an old story. Increased quiet, increased commerce and wealth, increased liberty, increased civilisation-these have been the consequences to Scotland of the once detested Union. That Scotland, if left to pursue her separate career, would still have made progress in these respects, need not be doubted; but that the degree and the kind of the progress she has made are traceable to the fact of the Union, admits of historical proof. One great advantage, serving as a subject of humorous boast to Scotchmen, and of humorous retort by Englishmen, has certainly been, that since the Union, Scottish talent and Scottish energy have had a wider and richer field to expatiate in than they would otherwise have possessed. There can be no doubt that, in the general field of British activity, in all its departments, Scotchmen have, during the last century and a half, done a disproportionate share of the work, and earned a disproportionate share of the recompense. There have been Scottish Prime Ministers of Britain; Scottish Chief Justices of England; Scottish Lord Chancellors; Scottish Generals of British armies, and Admirals of British fleets; Scottish Governors of India, and other colonial dependencies of Britain. England is full of Scottish merchants and manufacturers. London is full of Scottish literary men, and Scottish editors of newspapers. Since the times of Bute and Dr. Johnson the success of Sawney south of the Tweed has been a proverb. It almost seems as if there were a spice of truth in the malicious old legend attached to the famous stone on which the Scottish Kings used to be crowned at Scone, and which at this moment lies in Westminster Abbey, having been foolishly transported thither centuries ago in token of the subjugation of Scotland by the English. "Ni fallat fatum, Scoti, quocunque locatum Invenient lapidem, regnare tenentur ibidem." "If Fate cheat not, where'er this stone is found, There Scottish men are masters of the ground." For all this, we are obliged to the Union; and our wish certainly is, that the English may never send that stone back! It were too late now if they did. We have made good our ground. We have done so fairly and honestly, we hope, by applying to general British purposes and general British interests, a little of that quality in which we do, perhaps, surpass Englishmen-fervour or emphasis. Great Britain, we believe, has been indebted, in no ordinary degree, to that fund of specific Scottish energy, which the Union of 1707 placed at her disposal. But, on the other hand, with what a noble exchange has England repaid the services of the little nation Nor with which it had become necessary for her then to unite! Even if commercial and industrial prosperity had not resulted to Scotland from the Union in such ample measure, it would have been no slight thing for a country so meagre, in many respects, to have stepped in, on such easy terms, to a participation of the moral glories of a civilization so much more mature than its own, and to the inheritance of a past history so much more massive and broad in the eyes of the world. The proudest Scotchman will not deny that, great as may be the faculties and virtues of his nation, the Scottish character had and still has much to learn, in respect both of principle and of habit, from the large, orderly, and just character of the Englishman. The most zealous defender of old Scottish polity will not deny that, at the Union, Scottish society was a chaos of popular and clannish confusion, compared with the larger society, tenacious of civil rule and liberty, with which it was then associated. The most enthusiastic admirers of the Wallaces, and Bruces, and Knoxes of the Scottish past, cannot but feel it a great thing to have even a collateral right to be proud of such English heroes as Wycliffe, Drake, Cromwell, and Marlborough. will the most learned historian of the intellectual and literary antiquities of Scotland, the man most capable of tracing the direct effects of Scottish though upon the metaphysics of Europe in the Middle Ages, and most deeply read in the lives and works of the old Scottish Buchanans, and Dunbars, and Lindsays, venture to say, that the literature which Scotland handed over to England, a hundred and fifty years ago, at a time when Sir George Mackenzie was, perhaps, the chief Scottish literary celebrity, was an adequate equivalent for that abundant literature of so many dead Chaucers, and Spencers, and Shakespeares, and Bacons, and Miltons, and of some living Swifts and Addisons to boot, which England handed over to Scotland in exchange. True, we have since given good interest for the loan in our Reids, our Humes, and Adam Smiths, and Burnses, and Scotts, and Campbells, and Jeffreys, and other Scottish poets and prose writers, some of whom are yet alive. It will not be said, however, that the interest has yet accumulated so as quite to pay off the debt. True, also, we might have had, by virtue of a common language and a common lineage, some right to claim these glories, and to share these bequests of the English past, even had no Union taken place. It was the Union, however, that confirmed the claim, and made it natural and easy for us to advance it, or even to feel that we possessed it. It being admitted, however, on all hands, that Scotland collectively, and Scotland indi |