The Union produced some immediate effects of a remarkable nature on the industry and traffic of Scotland—not all of them good, it must be owned, but this solely by reason of the erroneous laws in respect of trade which existed in England, and to which Scotland was obliged to conform.
Scotland had immediately to cease importing wines, brandy, and all things produced by France; with no remeed but what was supplied by the smuggler. This was one branch of her public or ostensible commerce now entirely destroyed. She had also, in conformity with England, to cease exporting her wool. This, however, was an evil not wholly unalleviated, as will presently be seen.
Before this time, as admitted by Defoe, the Scotch people had ‘begun to come to some perfection in making broad cloths, druggets, and [woollen] stuffs of all sorts.’ Now that there was no longer a prohibition of English goods of the same kinds, these began to come in in such great quantity, and at such prices, as at once extinguished the superior woollen manufacture in Scotland. There remained the manufacture of coarse cloths, as Stirling serges, Musselburgh stuffs, and the like; and this now rather flourished, partly because the wool, being forbidden to be sent abroad, could be had at a lower price, and partly because these goods came into demand in England. Of course, the people at large were injured by not getting the best price for their wool, and benefited by getting the finer English woollen goods at a cheaper rate than they had formerly paid for their own manufactures of the same kinds; but no one saw such matters in such a light at that time. The object everywhere held in view was to benefit trade—that is, everybody’s peculium, as distinguished from the general good. The general good was left to see after itself, after everybody’s peculium had been served; and small enough were the crumbs usually left to it.
On the other hand, duties being taken off Scottish linen introduced into England, there was immediately a large increase to that branch of the national industry. Englishmen came down and established works for sail-cloth, for damasks, and other linen |1708.| articles heretofore hardly known in the north; and thus it was remarked there was as much employment for the poor as in the best days of the woollen manufacture.
The colonial trade being now, moreover, open to Scottish enterprise, there was an immediate stimulus to the building of ships for that market. Cargoes of Scottish goods went out in great quantity, in exchange for colonial products brought in. According to Defoe, ‘several ships were laden for Virginia and Barbadoes the very first year after the Union.’[[399]]
We get a striking idea of the small scale on which the earlier commercial efforts were conducted, from a fact noted by Wodrow, as to a loss made by the Glasgow merchants in the autumn of 1709. ‘In the beginning of this month [November],’ says he, ‘Borrowstounness and Glasgow have suffered very much by the fleet going to Holland, its being taken by the French. It’s said that in all there is about eighty thousand pounds sterling lost there, whereof Glasgow has lost ten thousand pounds. I wish trading persons may see the language of such a providence. I am sure the Lord is remarkably frowning upon our trade, in more respects than one, since it was put in the room of religion, in the late alteration of our constitution.’[[400]]
When one thinks of the present superb wealth and commercial distinction of the Queen of the West, it is impossible to withhold a smile at Wodrow’s remarks on its loss of ten thousand pounds. Yet the fact is, that up to this time Glasgow had but a petty trade, chiefly in sugar, herrings, and coarse woollen wares. Its tobacco-trade, the origin of its grandeur, is understood to date only from 1707, and it was not till 1718 that Glasgow sent any vessel belonging to itself across the Atlantic. Sir John Dalrymple, writing shortly before 1788, says: ‘I once asked the late Provost Cochrane of Glasgow, who was eminently wise, and who has been a merchant there for seventy years, to what causes he imputed the sudden rise of Glasgow. He said it was all owing to four young men of talents and spirit, who started at one time in business, and whose success gave example to the rest. The four had not ten thousand pounds amongst them when they began.’[[401]]
1708.
Defoe tells us that, within little more than a year after the Union, Scotland felt the benefit of the liberation of her commerce in one article to a most remarkable extent. In that time, she sent 170,000 bolls of grain into England, besides a large quantity which English merchants bought up and shipped directly off for Portugal. The hardy little cattle of her pastures, which before the Union had been sent in large droves into England, being doubtless the principal article represented in the two hundred thousand pounds which Scotland was ascertained to obtain annually from her English customers, were now transmitted in still larger numbers, insomuch that men of birth and figure went into the trade. Even a Highland gentleman would think it not beneath him to engage in so lucrative a traffic, however much in his soul he might despise the Saxons whose gluttony he considered himself as gratifying. It has often been told that the Honourable Patrick Ogilvie, whom the reader has already seen engaged in a different career of activity, took up the cattle-trade, and was soon after remonstrated with by his brother, the Earl of Seafield, who, as Chancellor of Scotland, had been deeply concerned in bringing about the Union. The worthy scion of nobility drily remarked in answer: ‘Better sell nowte than sell nations.’[[402]]
A sketch given of a cattle-fair at Crieff in 1723 by an intelligent traveller, shews that the trade continued to prosper. ‘There were,’ says he, ‘at least thirty thousand cattle sold there, most of them to English drovers, who paid down above thirty thousand guineas in ready money to the Highlanders; a sum they had never before seen. The Highland gentlemen were mighty civil, dressed in their slashed waistcoats, a trousing (which is, breeches and stockings of one piece of striped stuff), with a plaid for a cloak, and a blue bonnet. They have a poniard knife and fork in one sheath, hanging at one side of their belt, their pistol at the other, and their snuff-mill before; with a great broadsword by their side. Their attendance was very numerous, all in belted plaids, girt like women’s petticoats down to the knee; their thighs and half of the leg all bare. They had also each their broadsword and poniard, and spake all Irish, an unintelligible language to the English. However, these poor creatures hired themselves out for a shilling a day, to drive the cattle to England, and to return home at their own charge.’[[403]]