1706.]

VIEWS OF SETON OF PITMEDDEN.

323

this notion was a delusion: "This nation is behind all other nations of Europe, for many years, with respect to the effect of an extended trade. This nation being poor, and without force to protect its commerce, cannot reap great advantages by it, till it partake of the trade and protection of some powerful neighbour nation, that can communicate both these." He then shows that, "supposing an entire separation from England," the established commerce of the English and Dutch, especially, would prevent any successful rivalry. The alliance of a neighbour nation was therefore essential. There was no chance of such an alliance with Holland, for they were each dealers in the same goods. With France" few advantages can be reaped, unless the old offensive and defensive league be revived between France and Scotland," and then there would be war with England. The possible results of such a war are thus gravely stated by Seton: "Allowing the Scots, in such a juncture, with the assistance of France, to conquer England,-Scotland, by that conquest, could not hope to better its present state; for it is more than probable the conqueror would make her residence in England, as formerly the northern people used to do in their southern expeditions." The conquering Scot could not " quaff the pendent vintage as it grows ; " but when the commerce of the Thames poured into his lap all the treasures of the East and of the West, he would leave the port of Leith to the petty gains of her fleet of herring-busses, and would drink "the blude-reid wine with his king at Westminster, who would scorn to sit "in Dumferling toune." It was long the dream of the Jacobites that Scotland, with the assistance of France, might conquer England. The dreamers awoke, in 1745, to the dirge of "Mourn, hapless Caledonia, mourn." The strong common sense of Seton of Pitmedden sums up the benefits to Scotland of an incorporating Union, in words which sound more like a true prophecy than the rhetorical visions of the young seer, Belhaven: "I may assert, that by this Union we will have access to all the advantages in commerce which the English enjoy: we will be capable, by a good government, to improve our natural products, for the benefit of the whole island; and we will have our liberty, property, and religion, secured under the protection of one Sovereign, and one Parliament, of Great Britain." * It is satisfactory to contrast the manifestations in the Scottish Parliament of an enthusiastic exclusiveness, and of a less self-satisfied patriotism. It is satisfactory, because out of the fervid nationality and the practical wisdom have been formed that Scottish character, which has tardily but surely amalgamated with the English character, "for the benefit of the whole island"—a character upon which the old English belief in the real and the stage Macsycophants has left no enduring taint-which has survived the growls of Johnson and the libels of Churchill; which has ceased to be violently combative when any assimilation of the laws and institutions of the northern and southern sides of the Tweed is proposed; which calls up all the old fire of as true a nationality, when a common enemy of the whole island is to be fought, a common injustice to be redressed, or a common reform to be struggled for.

When the vote was taken upon the first Article of the Treaty of Union,viz., "That the two kingdoms of Scotland and England shall, upon the first day of May next ensuing the date hereof, and for ever after, be united into

Seton's statesmanlike speech is given in Defoe's "History of the Union ;" and in Parliamentary History of England,” vol. vi.

324

PROVISION FOR THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND-RIOTS.

[1706.

one kingdom by the name of Great Britain,"-there was a majority of thirtythree in favour of this fundamental proposition. There was a majority in each Estate-of peers, of barons or representatives of counties, of representatives of towns. The second Article for the Succession of the Monarchy, and the third for representation by one Parliament, were also carried within the next fortnight. The question which was excepted from the Treaty, that of the Church of Scotland, was then agitated; and it was resolved in a way which abated the fears of the Presbyterians, by passing a separate Act to provide for the Security of the Church; which Act was to be repeated as a part of any Act of the Scottish or English Parliament adopting the Union. Under this Statute, every sovereign of Great Britain, upon his or her accession, is to take an oath to protect the government, worship, discipline, rights, and privileges of the Church of Scotland. The Estates then proceeded to the consideration of the minute details of the remaining twenty Articles of the Treaty. This discussion lasted till the middle of January, 1707.

The opposition to the Union beyond the walls of the Scottish Parliament could scarcely be called national, in a large sense of the word. But it was nevertheless a formidable opposition, manifesting itself amongst very various parties and conditions of society. The duke of Queensberry, the queen's High Commissioner, was instrumental in disarming the violence, both within the Parliament and without, by his patience and moderation. "The duke, in all the heats and animosities of the party, in all the convulsions of the kingdom, carried on the treaty with easiness, temper, and extraordinary conduct, not taking advantage of the rashness and madness of the people, pitying, rather than apprehending danger from their folly." Queensberry was threatened with assassination. He was told that two and twenty had subscribed an oath with their blood, by which they were bound together to assassinate him. No attempt was made to commit this crime. There was a second outbreak in Edinburgh, but there was no bloodshed. Those who have been described as the fiercest mob in Europe were singularly harmless during the three months of excitement which preceded the passing of the Act of Union. There was a more serious riot at Glasgow on the 7th of November, which lasted several days. Those who had been fighting at Bothwell Brig with a fury which Claverhouse and Balfour have impersonated for history and romance, were now united to hunt after an obdurate provost who had declined to sanction a city-address against the Union. Jacobites and Cameronians,-Papists and Hill-preachers -were masters for a time of the city of Glasgow. "They ranged the streets and did what they pleased; no magistrate durst show his face to them; they challenged people as they walked the streets with this question, Are you for the Union? and no man durst own it but at his extremest hazard." They searched for arms in private houses; and their rudeness, says Defoe, is not to be described. But this rude mob took no life away. "Except that there was no blood shed, they acted the exact part of an enraged ungoverned multitude." A few of the leaders of these riots were taken, and the Glasgow baillies were soon relieved of their fears.

There is a grave record of an important demonstration of this period, in a work which might pass for such an ingenious fiction as the famous " Gil Blas

Defoe, "History of the Union," p. 212.

+ Ibid. p. 272.

1706.]

DEMONSTRATION OF THE CAMERONIANS.

325

de Santillane," or "The History of the Life of Mr. Jonathan Wild, the Great," if the author were not a distinguished personage known by "his several transactions and negotiations in Scotland, England, the courts of Vienna, Hanover, and other foreign parts," as the title-page of his book duly sets forth.* John Ker describes the three great parties of Scotland, the Presbyterian, the Cameronian, and the Episcopal. The Presbyterian were divided into the complying and the non-juring; the non-jurors taking exception to the oath which referred to the English statute under which the sovereign was required to be of the communion of the Church of England. He paints the Cameronians, as cleaving to the form of Church government established in 1648; despising the Indulgence of Charles II., the Toleration of James II., and the Revolution establishment; they continue to preach in the fields, still retaining the doctrine of resistance and self-defence, however peaceable. The Episcopal party, he says, "are generally in the Pretender's interest, and are near one-half of the nation," among whom are to be reckoned the most part of the Highland Clans. John Ker was considered as one of great influence amongst the Cameronians. But, as he himself professes, he was strenuously opposed to the schemes of the Jacobites, who were endeavouring to engage the Presbyterians and Cameronians on their side, to prevent the Union. "I soon perceived," says the man of influence, "abundance of private transactions in favour of the Pretender; for it was impossible for the Jacobites to carry them on without my knowledge, considering the great interest I had with the Cameronians." The duke of Queensberry sent for Mr. Ker, for the government had advices that the Cameronians and Jacobites were to meet in arms on the river Nith, near Sanquhar, to put an end to the Parliament, and that the French king would send over troops, " to improve the opportunity." The laird of Kersland said he was always an enemy to Popery and the Pretender; but then was he able to dissuade the Cameronians from their purpose? He could not resist the duke's "rhetorical arguments;" and so an ingenious device occurred to the loyal man: "If I purposed to do any effectual service, I must enter into all their measures, and then probably they would honour me with the chief command, and by being at their head in rebellion against the queen and government I should expose myself to their displeasure; and therefore it would be proper I should have a Privy-seal, authorising me to act as I found convenient."+ So John Ker wends his thoughtful way from Edinburgh to Killoch Side, near Sanquhar, where the Cameronian leaders were assembled; and they admitted him forthwith into their general meeting. He gives his harangue to this meeting. Matters are now brought to a crisis. All that is dear to us, as Protestants, is likely to be rendered precarious by the proposed Union. Are we to oppose this Union or not? "If you agree in the affirmative, then what sort of opposition this shall be ; for it is very evident that the Parliament resolves to ram it down our throats." Prevail upon them, said Queensberry, to decline their desperate resolutions. The eloquence of Ker produced a determination to do something more decided. "I pretended-and would to God I had dealt more sincerely-to join with them in all their measures, and offered to fortify their resolutions

"The Memoirs of John Ker, of Kersland, in North Britain, Esqre." 2 vols. 3d edit. 1737. Memoirs, p. 31.

326

THE ACT OF UNION PASSED IN SCOTLAND.

[1707 with some arguments of my own." Then they resolved to burn the Articles publicly at the Market-cross of Dumfries, and to publish their declaration that all who supported the Union were enemies and traitors to their country. On the 20th of November the burning was "very solemnly performed, by a considerable party of horse and foot under arms, with sound of trumpet and beat of drum." The worthy orator of Killoch Side quieted the apprehensions of the government that horse and foot and beat of drum meant insurrection: "I despatched an express to the duke of Queensberry, and told him, though I had given way to such a solemn execution of the Union Articles, that he might be easy notwithstanding, for it was necessary to keep up to the decorum they expected, in order to prevent their prosecution of such measures as must infallibly disappoint him. And farther, I told him, it might be found expedient to burn the houses of some that had been most instrumental in carrying on the Union; but nevertheless, I doubted not to order matters so, as that nothing was to be feared from the Cameronians upon this conduct, which looked very like earnest. I am convinced the whole body of the Cameronians were resolved, my unworthy self only excepted."

John Ker, of Kersland, is the type of many an intriguing spy, who, in dangerous times, has encouraged the agitation which he was employed to watch. It was fortunate that the Cameronians were not driven to carry their zeal beyond the Market-cross at Dumfries. Vast things were expected from the junction of the true League and Covenant men with the Jacobites, Papists and Episcopalians. They were to march to Hamilton, seven thousand in number. The duke of Athol was to lead his Highlanders through the famous pass where Dundee scattered six thousand veterans. The duke of Hamilton was to head this motley army. The duke was wiser. He sent orders to the Highlanders and Cameronians to disperse and return home. The duke was unstable in his modes of opposition to the Union. All parties began to look with suspicion upon his alternations of a hot and cold policy, and upon the blandishments of his mother towards the Presbyterians. "It was suggested," says Burnet, "that she and her son had particular views, as hoping that if Scotland should continue a separated kingdom, the crown might come into their family, they being the next in blood after king James's posterity." *

Despite the Jacobites and the Cameronians, the timid Presbyterians and the semi-Papist Episcopalians, the Act of the Scottish Estates for the Union was finally passed on the 16th of January, by a hundred and ten votes against sixty-nine. "And there's an end o' an auld sang," said the Chancellor. It was an insult, cries the chivalrous Sir Walter Scott; "for which he deserved to be destroyed on the spot by his indignant countrymen." + Belhaven complained that the Union would compel the peers of Scotland to "lay aside their walking-swords when in company with the English peers, lest their self-defence should be called murder." We have outgrown the use of walking-swords, even for the self-defence which the Scottish peer thought a privilege of his order; certainly so for such homicide as the Scottish poet thought a fitting propitiation to the shades of the hundred and fourteen kings whose line began when Cheops was unborn.

* "Own Time," vol. v. p. 277.

+ Note in Burton, p. 482.

1707.J

THE ACT OF UNION PASSED IN SCOTLAND.

327

Before the Scottish Parliament separated, they regulated the election of the Representative Peers, and the proportion of county and borough members of the Commons. They had to arrange the division of the Equivalent money, of which the Darien or African Company had a large share. The last meeting of the Scottish Estates was on the 26th of March, 1707.

The Order of the Thistle, which had been revived by queen Anne in 1703, was not filled up by elections till some few years had elapsed. James II. had contemplated the restitution of the Order, but no patent for this object had passed the Great Seal. There was now in the possession of the Crown the means of bestowing a great distinction, essentially national; for in the Statutes of 1703 the number of knights was limited to twelve peers of Scotland, the sovereign being the head. This number somewhat profanely kept in view the precedent of our Saviour and the twelve apostles. George I. broke through the principle of exclusive nationality by bestowing the honour upon a few English peers. George IV. overturned the scriptural character by raising the number of knights to sixteen.

Collar of the Order of the Thistle.

The Parliament of England had met in December, during the anxious discussion in Scotland of the Articles of the Treaty of Union. At the end of January the queen sent to the House of Peers, and announced that the Treaty for an Union had been ratified by Act of Parliament in Scotland, with some alterations and additions. The Articles were then presented. In the Lords, a Bill was brought in for the Security of the Church of England as by law established; the movers having, of course, a slight apprehension that the sovereign's oath to preserve the Church of Scotland might be liable to misconstruction unless thus qualified. The debates in the English Parliament on the principle of the Union were animated, but were not violent. The ministry were anxious to pass the Bill for the Union, without making any alteration in the Articles as adopted by the Scottish Parliament. They succeeded in preventing a debate on each clause by inserting the Articles in