National independence was the idol of our ancestors, and to it almost every other consideration was sacrificed. Unequivocally as they had been subdued by Cromwell, there were some alleviating circumstances that soothed the pride of the Scots in their humiliation, but exasperated their hatred against the English, whose superiority they at once envied and acknowledged. Dissension had enabled the protector to achieve a conquest which his projected union was intended to confirm; and as the grounds of his incorporating alliance were adopted as the basis of the present settlement, the recollection was painful and degrading, and when they were reminded of the blood that had been shed, and the efforts that have been made to preserve the sacred inheritance, an indignant swelling of wounded nationality assumed the semblance of patriotism, and all the inherited animosity of former times for their more powerful neighbour was called again into action. This sentiment pervaded the whole land, and the writers of that day did not fail to bring to their recollection the attempts to coalesce ineffectually made in the reigns of James I. and Charles II. which failed only, they alleged, because the Scottish statesmen were not prepared to surrender the bequest of their fathers, to merge their parliament in a foreign legislature, and contentedly sink into a province of England.

Next, if not equal, was the form of their religion. However many temporized in times of persecution, or however house adjacent to the abbey, several years after the union took place; and ford Mar's papers respecting the union and the rebellion, 1715, were likewise destroyed. Nor did the records of the church escape from similar calamity. In the great fire, 1700, and in another in the Lawnmercat, 1701, a number of the registers of the general assemblies, and the minutes of the commission, from the revolution to that period, perished; fortunately the printed acts preserve the record of the principal transactions; but a number of curious and interesting occurrences connected with them must now be gleaned from other quarters. The numberless tracts, however, published at the time the Union was in discussion, and after, amid an intolerable load of rubbish, afford a great deal of curious and important information. I may here just mention, that my friend the very Rev. Principal Baird, and my old class-fellow Dr. Lee, have afforded me every facility for examining the records of the church, and Mr. Goold has assisted me as far as in his power respecting the history of the Cameronians.

little numbers cared about the spirit, presbytery was entwined with the earliest and dearest recollections of the Scottish people; the sufferings of their fathers yet fresh in their memory, the tyranny of the prelates, their pomp and lordly state, the idleness and the profligacy of the curates, not yet effaced from their recollection-wedded them to the plainness and simplicity of their own ministers, and made them dread the shadow of an episcopal yoke. In an union with England, they saw episcopacy the establishment of the more powerful state, and the bishops forming part of a legislature, where their representation would be a wretched minority; and they could not understand the nature of that security which the powerful promises to the weak, other than as the fabled compact between the wolf and the lamb.

It was upon these two grand leading principles that the patriots of the day acted, and it was upon these that the jacobites themselves were constrained to act in all their public appearances. In the lowlands, the latter were never numerous, but they were noisy and active, and deemed no means unlawful by which there was a possibility of bringing back their beloved despotism. They therefore artfully followed where they could not lead, and assumed the merit of being directors of the current down which they swam, in the hope of its bursting its banks, and deluging the country; in whose wide-spreading ruin they might haply find some selfish accidental advantage. Wherever they could not excite a disturbance, they urged it on, and, if not at the bottom, were certain to be in the middle of the affray. Like all such intermeddlers, however, they were frequently blamed for what they were not guilty, and they as frequently made a merit of that in which they had no hand. Every tumult, in consequence, which took place during the perturbed state of the public mind respecting the union, while the debates were going forward in parliament, was claimed by, or attributed to the jacobites. But with the most regular, that at Dumfries, they had nothing to do, and their connexion with the movements in the west was at best doubtful;-if they were not the dupes, they were not the principals.

After the articles had been printed and dispersed, and the table of the estates was covered with petitions against them, the peasantry of Nithsdale entered Dumfries in arms, and publicly burned at the cross the articles and the names of the commissioners, affixing at the same time, in imitation of the days of yore, a declaration, disclaiming all intention of interfering with the proceedings of parliament. Yet they formally protested, "that if the subscribers to the foresaid treaty of union with their associates in parliament, should presume to carry on the said union by a supreme power over the generality of the nation," "then and in that case," they add," as we judge that the consent of the generality of the same can only divest them of their sacred and civil liberties purchased and maintained by our ances tors with their blood, so we protest that whatever ratification of the foresaid union may pass in parliament contrary to our fundamental laws, liberties, and privileges in church and state, may not be binding upon the nation, now nor at any time to come." Their formidable appearance occasioned considerable alarm; but, except publishing their manifesto, and remaining together for a few days, they carried their hostilities no farther.

In the west appearances were more threatening; the po pulation were strictly presbyterian, attached to the protestant succession, but determined opponents to every shape and form of episcopacy. The inhabitants of Glasgow had already expressed their disapprobation; but, under the right allowed by the act of security, the different counties. at length assembled openly for military training, with the avowed purpose of dissolving the parliament by force. They had established correspondences with each other, and sent emissaries through the north and the east, to excite

• Kerr of Kersland, in his memoirs, v. i. p. 42, et seq. claims the merit of guiding this business, and disappointing the jacobites of the north of the co-operation of the Cameronians; but his is a very doubtful authority, and he evidently did not understand the principles of the Cameronians, nor do I find any trace of him in the MS. minutes of the general meetings: he was, by his own account of himself, a most unprincipled miscreant; or, to comprehend all that is vile in one epithet,a Government Spy.

these quarters to similar measures. While these movements were going on, Cunningham of Eskett, a reduced presbyterian officer in indigent circumstances, informed the known leaders of the jacobites, Brisbane of Bishopton, Cochrane of Kilmaronock, and Lockhart of Carnwath, that he wished to do something to save his perishing country, and was certain, if he had the means, he could engage the western shires to march to Edinburgh. He accordingly procured from them a sum of money, and the duke of Athol engaged that he would secure the pass of Stirling, and keep open a communication with the north. Thus furnished and instructed, Cunningham gained the entire confidence of the leaders in the west, and having traversed the whole country, returned to his jacobite friends, informing them that all were prepared to rise at a signal, armed and ready to co-operate with their friends from the other quarters of the kingdom, in driving from the seats of which they were unworthy, a parliament who had sold themselves, and were about to sell their country. Whether he had been sincere, or in the service of government from the beginning, is uncertain; but at this critical moment he deserted the cause, and received his instructions from Queensberry. By him he was directed to repair to the west and south to amuse the confederates, and dissuade them from arms; in which he appears to have been seconded by Mr. John Hepburn, now again separated from the established church, and ministering among some dissatisfied congregations in the same district.*

Lockhart says, the government had gained over Mr. Hepburn, a mountain Cameronian minister, and he served them as a spy. Hepburn was not a Cameronian: he was minister of Orr at the revolu tion; and after a long tedious process, in which he was suspended and restored, deposed and reponed, according to a MS. note in a copy of "Humble pleadings for the good old way," now lying before me, which had belonged to his wife, he is said to have died minister at Orr, April 1723, in the 71st year of his age. He was occasionally con nected with some of the society-men in the south, and together with them he protested against the union, but published an open disclaimer of ever having had any connexion with the jacobites. He differed, however, from those who called Mr. John M‘Millan to be their minister, who were, correctly speaking, styled Cameronians, and were the

This mission he successfully performed, and that without incurring the suspicion of his employers: for the duke of Hamilton, who had at first entered into the project, but who, throughout the whole business, had kept nightly conferences with Queensberry in the palace where they both lodged, unwilling to have recourse to arms, or more probably under the influence of the commissioner, sent private messengers through the whole country, requiring them to put off their design; and on the day appointed, instead of seven or eight thousand men well armed assembling at the rendezvous, not above five hundred disregarded the orders and kept the appointment, and they, when they saw no general meeting, retired to their homes muttering curses against their betrayers.

Thus the only two insurrectional movements that seriously threatened the peace of the kingdom passed over, and the security act being immediately repealed, all future attempts were prevented. But the country remained in a state of gloomy inquietude during the progress of the bill for the union through their own, and with some small hope that it would be rejected by the English, parliament. The moment it passed the Scottish estates, Queensberry sent it off by express to London, where the English houses, whose meeting had been studiously delayed, were then sitting. Anne, who took the most lively interest in promot ing the object, immediately in person communicated to them the important fact, and expressed the great satisfaction she experienced in affording them an opportunity of putting the last hand to a happy union of the two kingdoms; which she hoped would be a lasting blessing to the whole

regular predecessors of the reformed synod. They had many private. dissensions upon the topics of the day now properly buried in oblivion; but they all adhered rigidly to the original doctrine of the covenanters, and maintained undiminished their abhorrence at popery, prelacy, and despotism.

I cannot state every authority upon which my text is written; were I to do so, it would occupy about half a page of each sheet. Those who know the labour of historical composition alone can appreciate mine; to others, that is, to people not accustomed to similar research, references would be of little consequence. Often my authorities are half-sheets and quarter-pages.