When the articles of the proposed treaty as arranged by the joint Commission were published, there was in Scotland a general outburst of rage and mortification. It seemed as if they were to make a voluntary surrender of their dearly bought independence,—a descent from their position as a free nation, into that of a mere province. When the Scottish Parliament met in October, 1706, the whole country was in a state of dangerous excitement. Addresses against the proposed terms of union were sent from every county and town, from almost every parish in the kingdom. In some towns, copies of the Articles of Union were publicly burned. Edinburgh was in a state of wild tumult; the High Commissioner was hooted; the Provost, who was known to favour the obnoxious treaty, had his house wrecked. In the House of Parliament there were fierce debates, “resembling,” said an eye witness, “not a mere strife of tongues, but the clash of arms.” The opposition, headed by the Duke of Hamilton, did all they could to hinder the measure; finding their resistance ineffectual, they retired from the parliament house, and, clause by clause, the articles of treaty were formally passed by the compliant majority.
In March, 1707, the English parliament ratified the Treaty of Union, and on the 1st of May ensuing, it came into operation. It had been carried through the Scottish Parliament by transparent venality, and under popular disfavour. It was inaugurated in Scotland with sullen discontent, and for six years it was there the ruling passion to discredit and decry it. And so far its results had not contradicted evil forebodings. As had been feared, the very slender representation of Scotland in the Imperial Parliament, gave it only a weak voice in legislature. The English treason laws, and malt-tax were extended to Scotland. The Scottish representatives in the Commons complained that they were not treated as equals by their fellow-members—not as representing a free nation, the equal of England in its rights and privileges, but a subjugated and dependent province. Sneers at their country, and sarcasms on their own accent, manners, and appearance, were daily met with by men who were proud of their native land, and in that land had been accorded the respect due to gentlemen of birth, breeding, and education. And Scottish noblemen, who had not been elected on the representative sixteen, but had been created British Peers by the sovereign, were, by a resolution of the House of Lords, refused seats in that House.
In 1713, the Scottish members in both Houses,—and who included within their ranks men of all political parties—Revolution Whigs, and Tory advocates of kingly prerogative, Jacobites and adherents of the House of Hanover,—unanimously resolved to move in parliament the repeal of the Act of Union, on the grounds that it had failed in the good results which had been anticipated from it. And in the then state of parties in England, there seemed a fair chance of carrying the proposed abrogation. For the Whigs, who had been the dominant party, from the Revolution to 1710, when they were ousted from office, were now—although they had been the active promoters of the Union—prepared to do anything to cripple the government. The defence of the Union now rested with the Tories, who had strenuously opposed it, and obstructed it at every stage.
On the 1st of June, the motion for repeal was brought up in the House of Lords, and after a warm debate was rejected by a majority of only four votes. So, happily for both countries, the Union had farther trial; and as in the generality of prognostications of evil, as the resultant of political or social change, time has proved their falsity. Under the Union, Scotland advanced in material prosperity, and as a nation she has fully maintained her national prestige. Scotsmen have ever taken an active part—at times a leading part—in imperial affairs. In diplomacy and in war, in science and invention, in literature and art, in philosophy and trading enterprise, Scotsmen have been well in line with men of the other nationalities which together constitute the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
The Jacobite Risings of 1715.
Queen Anne was not a woman of strong intellect, but simple and homely in her tastes; weakly obstinate, like the Stuart race. In the earlier years of her reign, with the Whigs in power, she was under the stronger will of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough; in the later years, when the Tories held office, she was largely ruled by a Mrs. Masham. Her domestic story was a painful one. She passed through a motherhood of nineteen children, nearly all of whom died in infancy, only one son reaching the age of eleven years. Her husband, Prince George of Denmark, was the very embodiment of dulness and stupidity. King James, his father-in-law, said of him, “I have tried George drunk, and I have tried him sober; drunk or sober there is nothing in him.” He took no part in public affairs. He died in 1708, and Anne, widowed, childless, and in broken health, was as lonely a woman as any within the three kingdoms which acknowledged her sovereignty.
There is no doubt that after she had lost all her own children, her sympathies were with her father’s son, generally known as The Pretender. She felt more and more as her life was ebbing to its end, that she had not been a dutiful daughter. In her own loneliness she must have had abiding thoughts of her young brother, expatriated from his father-land. Whilst she was living in royal estate, he, the legitimate heir of that estate, was a homeless waif,—ever tantalized by fruitless hopes and longings. What to her was this second cousin in Hanover,—a foreigner by birth and in all his interests? She was horror-stricken at, and absolutely refused to sanction, a Whig proposal, that Elector George should be invited to visit Britain, and make some acquaintance with the country which he was one day to rule over.
Anne’s two leading ministers—Oxford and Bolingbroke, at one in their Jacobite proclivities, were yet at personal variance. At a council meeting, on 27th July, 1714, at which the queen was present, they had a fierce quarrel, and, under the joint influence of Bolingbroke and Mrs. Masham, the Queen dismissed Oxford from office. But the triumph of Bolingbroke was short-lived, for the stormy council meeting so acted on the queen, that she next day fell into a lethargy, from which—with brief intervals of semi-consciousness—she never rallied.
On the 30th of July, when it was known that the queen was sinking, two Whig lords, the Dukes of Somerset and Argyle, took upon themselves, in virtue of their position as privy-councillors, to attend unsummoned the council board. They found the ministers in a state of utter perplexity and alarm; humble enough to agree to a proposal that in the present grave crisis, the queen should be asked to confer the premiership upon the Duke of Shrewsbury. He had taken a leading part in the revolution, been one of William’s chief secretaries of state, and was much respected by both parties. The dying queen gave, by a sign, her consent to his receiving the staff of office. That feeble sign was the last public action of the Stuart dynasty. Anne died on the 1st of August, and next day the Elector of Hanover,—through his mother and grandmother, a great grandson of James I.,—was, as George the First, proclaimed king in London.