The Early History of the Scottish Union Question / Bi-Centenary Edition

by George W. T. Omond

A long time, however, was to pass before the subject of the Union was discussed by the Parliaments. The English Parliament had been summoned for the 5th of November 1605, when the articles were to have been debated. But the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot threw everything else into the shade; and though the Treaty of Union was presented, nothing more was done.

At last, when the Parliament of England met in November 1606, it was understood that the session was to be chiefly devoted to the Scottish question. The Articles of Union were known; and there was a storm of opposition from the merchants of London. Objections were raised to the admission of Scotsmen as members of English trading companies. There was also a strong dislike to allowing free trade between England and Scotland. The Scots, it was said, would come and go as they pleased, and fulfil or break their bargains just as it suited them. The English traders, moreover, wished a heavy duty to be imposed on cloth entering Scotland, because Scotland had, for a long time, been favoured in the custom duties which she paid in France; and this, along with other privileges she enjoyed in that country, might enable her to monopolise the trade in cloth with France. It was soon found that the dislike to the Union extended to every class throughout the country. There was a general fear that every district, and every calling, would be overrun with needy Scotsmen. The Articles of Union, it was said, would open to Scotsmen not only trade, but the Church, the universities, and the highest offices of State. They would fill, it was predicted, the best stalls in every cathedral in England; Latin would be taught at Oxford and Cambridge by the countrymen of Buchanan, whose scholarship not even English jealousy could venture to deny; and the tireless energy of ambitious Scottish politicians would secure the most lucrative places in the Government.

In Parliament, and especially in the House of Commons, these complaints were echoed. Sir Christopher Piggott, one of the members for Buckinghamshire, rose one day, and, speaking with his hat on, launched into a torrent of abuse against the idea of an Union with the Scots, who, he shouted, were murderers, thieves, and rogues who had not suffered more than two of their kings to die peaceably in their beds during the last two hundred years. The Commons, either from sympathy or in surprise, received this tirade in silence. But James, when he heard of it, was indignant; and Piggott was expelled from the House and committed to the Tower.[61]

In this spirit the debates, which began in February 1607, were conducted by the opponents of the Union. The first question which came up was the question of naturalisation. The speech of the member who opened the case against the proposals of the Union Commissioners consisted of an attack on Scotland and the Scots; and his chief argument against the Union was that if a man owned two pastures, the one fertile and the other barren, he would not, if he was a wise man, pull down the hedge, and allow the lean and hungry cattle to rush in and devour the rich pasture.

Bacon led on the other side. The grand idea of an orderly and well-balanced Union of the two kingdoms had fascinated his imagination. In moderate language, and in his most lucid manner, he answered his opponents, and expounded his own reasons for advising the Parliament of England to naturalise the Scottish nation. There were, he said, three objections to doing so. In the first place, it was thought that if the Scots were no longer aliens, they would settle in England in such numbers that the country would be over-populated. But, he answered, four years had passed since the Union of the Crowns, which was “the greatest spring-tide for the confluence and entrance of that nation”; and during these four years the only Scotsmen who had come to live in England were those immediately connected with the Court. Again, England, he declared, was not yet fully peopled. London was overcrowded; but the rest of the country showed signs of a want of inhabitants, in the shape of swamps and waste places. The Commons themselves might bear in mind “how many of us serve here in this place for desolate and decayed boroughs.” And, besides, what was the worst effect which could follow too great an increase of the population? Nothing more than some honourable war for the enlargement of our borders.

The second objection to naturalising the Scots was that the laws of England and Scotland were different, that the Articles of Union left them different, and that it was unreasonable to admit the Scots to the privileges of English citizens without making them adopt the laws of England. But, he argued, naturalisation must come first. The inhabitants of Ireland, of the Isle of Man, and of Jersey and Guernsey, had the benefits of naturalisation; but the laws of England were not yet in force among them. An union of laws might be brought about both in these places and in Scotland, but only in course of time.

The third objection was that there was so much inequality between England and Scotland that the Union would not be fair to England. This inequality, Bacon declared, consisted only in gold and silver, the external goods of fortune. “In their capacities and undertakings,” he said, “they are a people ingenious, in labour industrious, in courage valiant, in body hard, active, and comely.” If Scotland was, after all, to gain by the Union, then England might find that it was more blessed to give than to receive.

Having thus answered the objections to naturalisation, he next maintained that if naturalisation did not follow the Union of the Kingdoms under the same Crown, danger would be the result. History, he argued, teaches us that whenever kingdoms have been united by the link of the Crown alone, if that union has not been fortified by something more, and most of all by naturalisation, separation takes place. The Romans and the Latins were united; but the Latins were not made citizens of Rome. War was the result. Sparta was ruined by attempting to maintain a league with States whose peoples she jealously regarded as aliens. The history of Aragon and Castile, of Florence and Pisa, taught us the same lesson. And on the other hand, we find that where States have been united, and that union strengthened by the bond of naturalisation, they never separate again.