I was ... intrusted with another province by the Commissioners for Scotland, which was to review the Calculations made for the Equivalent to be paid to Scotland for bearing their share of the Debt of England, which were afterwards to be considered as the Debts of Great Britain. These calculations were chiefly made by Doctor Gregory, professor of Mathematicks in the College of Oxford, and a certain great accomptant and projector, one Patersone,[26] from Scotland, but bred in England from his infancy....

One day I had occasion to observe the Calamities which attend human nature even in the greatest dignities of Life. Her majesty was labouring under a fit of the Gout, and in extream pain and agony, and on this occasion every thing about her was much in the same disorder as about the meanest of her subjects. Her face, which was red and spotted, was rendered something frightful by her negligent dress, and the foot affected was tied up with a pultis and some nasty bandages. I was much affected at this sight, and the more when she had occasion to mention her people of Scotland, which she did frequently to the Duke. What are you, poor meanlike Mortal, thought I, who talks in the style of a Soveraign? Nature seems to be inverted when a poor infirm Woman becomes one of the Rulers of the World, but, as Tacitus observes, it is not the first time that Women have governed in Britain, and indeed they have sometimes done this to better purpose than the Men.

But to return to the Treaty of Union, the Articles were at last agreed to, sign'd, and sealed, by all the Commissioners, the 22 of July 1706. They were afterwards presented to the Queen at her palace of St James, before a very numerous Assembley.

FOOTNOTES:

[26] Founder of the Bank of England, and originator of the Darien Scheme.

C. Popular Hostility To the Union (1706).

Source.—The History of the Union of Great Britain, part iv., p. 27, by Daniel De Foe. (Edinburgh: 1709).

The common people now screw'd up to a pitch, and ripe for the mischief designed, and prompted by the particular agents of a wicked party, began to be very insolent: It had been whispered about several days, that the rabble would rise, and come up to the Parliament House; and cry No Union; that they would take away the Honours, as they call them, viz. the Crown etc., and carry them to the Castle, and a long variety of foolish reports of this kind. But the first appearance of anything mobish was, that every day, when the Duke[27] went up, but principally as he came down in his chair from the House, the mob follow'd him, shouting and crying out, God bless his Grace, for standing up against the Union, and appearing for his country, and the like.... On the 22nd of October, they follow'd the Duke's chair quite thro the city down to the Abbey Gate; the guards prevented their going further; but all the way as they came back, they were heard to threaten what they would do the next day; that then they would be a thousand times as many; that they would pull the traitors, so they called the treaters of the Union at London, out of their houses, and they would soon put an end to the Union.