THE

HISTORY OF SCOTLAND.

BOOK XIX.

LOOKING down from the eminence on which we now stand, with all the advantages of time, and with a full view of the consequences before us, we wonder that an object of such evident utility, and productive of such important benefit to Scotland, as the union of the two kingdoms, should ever have encountered such virulent and unremitting opposition as attended its progress should ever have been branded as a disgrace, or predicted as the ruin of the nation it was destined to raise from poverty to wealth, and from insignificance to an importance in the European family, which, without that conjunction, it could never have hoped to attain. But in order properly to understand this opposition, we must transport ourselves back to the days of our fathers, revive their prejudices, enter into their feelings, and recall their prospects and anticipations at the time when nine-tenths of the population of the land would have risen to prevent, or afterwards to break asunder a connexion, which the unanimous voice of their children would now pronounce it the greatest of their calamities, were it possible to dissolve.*

Some strange fatality has attended the records of Scotland from first to last; and those respecting the secret intrigues which produced the union have shared in the common lot. Among the MSS. of lord Somers, which were destroyed by a fire in London, were a large collection of papers relative to the union. A more serious loss was an extensive collection of state papers and letters made by lord Seafield, which, together with his memoirs of his own

National independence was the idol of our ancestors, and to it almost every other consideration was sacrificed. Unequivocally as they had been subdued by Cromwell, there were some alleviating circumstances that soothed the pride of the Scots in their humiliation, but exasperated their hatred against the English, whose superiority they at once envied and acknowledged. Dissension had enabled the protector to achieve a conquest which his projected union was intended to confirm; and as the grounds of his incorporating alliance were adopted as the basis of the present settlement, the recollection was painful and degrading; and when they were reminded of the blood that had been shed, and the efforts that have been made to preserve the sacred inheritance, an indignant swelling of wounded nationality assumed the semblance of patriotism, and all the inherited animosity of former times for their more powerful neighbour was called again into action. This sentiment pervaded the whole land, and the writers of that day did not fail to bring to their recollection the attempts to coalesce ineffectually made in the reigns of James I. and Charles II. which failed only, they alleged, because the Scottish statesmen were not prepared to surrender the bequest of their fathers, to merge their parliament in a foreign legislature, and contentedly sink into a province of England.

Next, if not equal, was the form of their religion. How

times, were consumed in his own house adjacent to the Abbey, several years after the union took place; and lord Mar's papers respecting the union and the rebellion, 1715, were likewise destroyed. Nor did the records of the church escape from similar calamity. In the great fire, 1700, and in another in the Lawnmercat, 1701, a number of the registers of the general assemblies, and the minutes of the commission, from the revolution to that period, perished; fortunately the printed acts preserve the record of the principal transactions; but a number of curious and interesting occurrences connected with them must now be gleaned from other quarters. The numberless tracts, however, published at the time the union was in discussion, and after, amid an intolerable load of rubbish, afford a great deal of curious and important information. I may here just mention, that my friend, the very Rev. Principal Baird, and my old class-fellow Dr. Lee, have afforded me every facility for examining the records of the church, and the Rev. Mr. Goold has assisted me as far as in his power respecting the history of the Cameronians.

ever many temporized in times of persecution, or however little numbers cared about the spirit, presbytery was entwined with the earliest and dearest recollections of the Scottish people; the sufferings of their fathers yet fresh in their memory, the tyranny of the prelates, their pomp and lordly state, the idleness and profligacy of the curates, not yet ef faced from their recollection-wedded them to the plainness and simplicity of their own ministers, and made them dread the shadow of an episcopal yoke. In an union with England, they saw episcopacy the establishment of the more powerful state, and the bishops forming part of a legislature where their representation would be a wretched minority; and they could not understand the nature of that security which the powerful promises to the weak, other than as the fabled compact between the wolf and the lamb.

It was upon these two grand leading principles that the patriots of the day acted, and it was upon these that the jacobites themselves were constrained to act in all their public appearances. In the lowlands, the latter were never numerous, but they were noisy and active, and deemed no means unlawful by which there was a possibility of bringing back their beloved despotism. They therefore artfully followed where they could not lead; and assumed the merit of being directors of the current down which they swam, in the hope of its bursting its banks, and deluging the country, in whose wide-spreading ruin they might haply find some selfish accidental advantage. Wherever they could not excite a disturbance, they urged it on, and, if not at the bottom, were certain to be in the middle of the affray. Like all such intermeddlers, however, they were frequently blamed for what they were not guilty, and they as frequently made a merit of that in which they had no hand. Every tumult, in consequence, which took place during the perturbed state of the public mind respecting the union, while the debates were going forward in parliament, was claimed by, or attributed to the jacobites. But with the most regular, that at Dumfries, they had nothing to do, and their connexion with the movements in the west was at best

doubtful; if they were not the dupes, they were not the principals.

After the articles had been printed and dispersed, and the table of the estates was covered with petitions against them, the peasantry of Nithsdale entered Dumfries in arms, and publicly burned at the cross the articles and the names of the commissioners, affixing at the same time, in imitation of the days of yore, a declaration, disclaiming all intention of interfering with the proceedings of parliament. Yet they formally protested," that if the subscribers to the foresaid treaty of union with their associates in parliament, should presume to carry on the said union by a supreme power over the generality of the nation," " then and in that case," they add," as we judge that the consent of the generality of the same can only divest them of their sacred and civil liberties purchased and maintained by our ancestors with their blood, so we protest that whatever ratification of the foresaid union may pass in parliament contrary to our fundamental laws, liberties, and privileges in church and state, may not be binding upon the nation, now nor at any time to come." Their formidable appearance occasioned considerable alarm; but, except publishing their manifesto, and remaining together for a few days, they carried their hostilities no farther.*

In the West, appearances were more threatening; the population were strictly presbyterian, attached to the protestant succession, but determined opponents to every shape and form of episcopacy. The inhabitants of Glasgow had already expressed their disapprobation; but, under the right allowed by the act of security, the different counties at length assembled openly for military training, with the avowed purpose of dissolving the parliament by force.

• Kerr of Kersland, in his memoirs, vol. i. p. 42, et seq. claims the merit of guiding this business, and disappointing the jacobites of the north of the cooperation of the Cameronians; but his is a very doubtful authority, and he evidently did not understand the principles of the Cameronians, nor do I find any trace of him in the MS. minutes of the general meetings; he was, by his own account of himself, a most unprincipled miscreant; or, to comprehend all that is vile in one epithet-a Hired Spy.