After a long delay the English commissioners returned their answer. They refused, in peremptory terms, to allow Scotland to trade with the colonies. The colonies, they said, were founded by Englishmen, and Scotsmen had no right to benefit by them. They were prepared, however, to permit Scotsmen to go and settle as merchants in the colonies; but they refused to allow Scottish ships to carry foreign produce into English ports. “The kingdom of Scotland,” they said, “being wholly independent, and not subject to the Crown of England, we cannot have reasonable security and satisfaction that the said kingdom will keep up, and tie itself, to the strict observation of the restrictions and limitations set down in the Act of Navigation, with relation to this matter.”
They offered, nevertheless, to make some concessions, on condition that those Acts of the Scottish Parliament which imposed a tariff hostile to English trade were repealed. If that were done, Scottish ships might import fish into England free of duty, and also tar, hemp, flax, raisins, and grain of any sort, on payment of the duty levied on aliens. They might also import timber into England for six years; and the reason for this concession was frankly stated to be that since the great fire of London there had been a scarcity of wood for rebuilding the city. They also offered to give Scottish ships the right, for six years only, of exporting goods from England, on payment of the same customs as English ships paid.
These terms were refused by the Scottish commissioners, who objected to the limitation of six years, and declared that the Scots wished to be, as they had been during the Union under Cromwell, in a position to compete, on equal terms, with the merchants of England. But the English commissioners would not yield; and the negotiations terminated without any result.
It was now evident that, so long as the two countries remained separate, there could be no genuine commercial prosperity in Scotland. It was, therefore, natural that the question of Union should be again revived. The project was first suggested by a Scottish peer, whose advice in other matters, if it had been taken, would have saved the Privy Council of Scotland from much of the blood-guiltiness which it incurred during these years. John, second Earl of Tweeddale, had been sworn of the Council at the Restoration, but had frequently raised his voice on behalf of the persecuted Presbyterians; and he had often endeavoured to discover some means by which peace could be restored to Scotland. His proposal now was that the Scottish Parliament should be called together, and invited to consider what steps should be taken to unite the kingdoms. To this Charles readily agreed, for he thought that if the two Parliaments were merged in one, the Lords and Commons who represented Scotland would, as a rule, support the measures of the Court. The Duke of Buckingham and the Lord Keeper Bridgeman were also in favour of this proposal.[100]
It was, indeed, the interest of all whose fortunes were bound up with the fortunes of the Royal Family that Scotland should be conciliated. The recent conferences had shown how strong the feeling of Scotland was on the subject of trade; and no candid-minded Englishman could deny that the grievances complained of by the commissioners from beyond the Tweed were real grievances. It was true that the more powerful nation was master of the field, and could, by obstinately opposing the demands of her weaker neighbour, debar her from the trade in which she was so anxious to obtain a share. But the lessons of the great Civil War had not been altogether forgotten at the Court; and, in the secret conclave of the king’s advisers, there always had been, ever since the Restoration, an uneasy feeling that a day might come when the Crown would find itself opposed by the Parliament. At such a crisis much would depend on what was done by Scotland. It was, therefore, of importance to persuade the people of Scotland that, so far as the king’s influence went, everything had been done to remove the commercial disabilities of which they so justly complained.
Lauderdale, who at the Restoration had supported the policy of separation, was now eager on the side of Union. No Parliament had met in Scotland since 1663. It would be necessary to summon the Estates together if the Union was to be discussed; and Lauderdale coveted the office of Lord High Commissioner. A Parliament was, therefore, summoned. It met at Edinburgh in October 1669. Lauderdale was Commissioner. A letter from the king was read, in which the Union was recommended to the favourable consideration of the Estates; and his Majesty’s servants proposed that an answer should at once be returned, announcing that the Parliament of Scotland was in favour of the Union. Some opposition was offered by Sir George Gordon of Haddo, then member for Aberdeenshire, and afterwards first Earl of Aberdeen, and by Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh, who a few years later became Lord Advocate; but, in the end, a letter was despatched in which the Estates approved of the Union, and left it to the king to name commissioners to treat upon the subject. The Parliament of England took the same view; and in September 1670, the commissioners met in London.[101]
Five questions were submitted to them: the preserving entire to both kingdoms of their laws, civil and ecclesiastical; the uniting of the two kingdoms into one monarchy; the reducing of both parliaments to one; the regulation of trade; and the best means of preserving the conditions of the Union.
The subject of trade, the most important of all, was never reached; for, before very long, the treaty broke down on the question of the representation of Scotland in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Scottish commissioners proposed that all the members of the Scottish Estates should be members of the Parliament. To this the English commissioners could not agree; and the proceedings came to an abrupt conclusion.
During these negotiations the Scotsmen had not been on very good terms with each other. Lauderdale and Tweeddale quarrelled; and Sir George Mackenzie says that the Lord Chancellor, at dinner one day, abused two of the commissioners, Sir Archibald Primrose, father of the first Earl of Rosebery, and Sir John Nisbet, then Lord Advocate, for walking on foot when they had a handsome allowance for expenses, and called them “damned lawyers.” They were heard to express their resentment at this; whereupon Lauderdale, who bore them a grudge as supporters of Tweeddale, told them he would accuse them to the king of trying to frustrate the Union by causing bad feeling among the commissioners. “And thus,” says Mackenzie, “in place of uniting the nations, these wise commissioners disunited themselves, and returned to Scotland as men from a rout.”
However popular an Union might have been among the Scottish merchants, it would have been most unpopular in England. The English merchants, who had exulted in the failure of the Commission on Trade, were up in arms against the idea of giving to Scotland the privileges which she would have secured by the Union; and the majority of Englishmen still hated and despised the very name of Scotland. This hatred and contempt of the neighbour country, an inheritance from the long years of international warfare, found vent in abusive descriptions of Scotland and the Scottish people, which were circulated all over the island, causing laughter in England and rousing bitter indignation beyond the Tweed. “The country,” says one writer, “is full of lakes and loughs, and they are well stocked with islands; so that a map thereof looks like a pillory coat bespattered all over with dirt and rotten eggs, some pieces of the shells floating here and there representing the islands.” The towns of Scotland were briefly described as poor and populous, especially Edinburgh, which resembled its inhabitants in “being high and dirty.” It was compared to a double comb, an article which Scotsmen did not often use, having one great street, with a number of alleys branching from it, which might be mistaken for common sewers.