They had established correspondences with each other, and sent emissaries through the north and the east, to excite 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 Kilmarnock, 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 cooperate 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 revolution; 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 connected 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

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 promoting 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

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 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.

last hand to a happy union of the two kingdoms; which she hoped would be a lasting blessing to the whole island, a great addition to its wealth and power, and a firm security to the protestant religion; and again repeated what she had frequently said, that she would look upon it as a particular happiness, if that great work which had been so often attempted without success, should be brought to perfection in her reign.

Both houses proceeded instantly to take the terms into consideration. The opposition, however, which was anticipated, was paralysed by causes over which the parties possessed no control, and upon which they could have formed no calculation. France was entirely broken in the field, and could neither afford the promise of money or of men. The English arms had been successful beyond the proudest hopes of their most sanguine expectants; but in their gazetted triumphs, the Scottish regiments bore no secondary part; the fall of a Douglas illustrated the victory of Steinkirk, and at Hockstead and at Blenheim the Cameronians were the first at the onset. Association in arms prepared the way for association in a civil compact; and it would have been base to refuse a share in the sordid gains of traffic to those who were earning the same meed of glory. Upon the articles of trade, therefore, respecting which the English were most refractory, they were ashamed to insist; for who would not blush in the careering hour of victory, to stoop to the paltry consideration of pence? The tories made a feeble effort in the house of commons to obstruct the treaty. But the first division, which carried triumphantly a vote of thanks to her majesty for her speech and her communication, proclaimed the hopelessness of all opposition.

Sir John Parkington said, "that for his part he was absolutely against this incorporating union, which was like marrying a woman against her consent: an union that was carried on by corruption and bribery within doors, and by force and violence without." Sir John was repeatedly interrupted, but he reiterated his charge, and enforced it by de

claring, "that the promoters of that union, in basely giving up their independent constitution, had actually betrayed the trust reposed in them; and therefore he would leave it to the judgment of the house to consider whether or not men of such principles were fit to be admitted among them." No reply was made by the ministers, who were more anxious to get the measure approved than debated. The articles were therefore gravely read without disputation, and a bill ordered to be brought in.

The tories were prepared to resist in detail; but sir Simon Harcourt, the solicitor-general, drew it up in such a manner as precluded discussion. The preamble consisted of a recital of the articles as they passed in Scotland, together with the act for the security of the presbyterian church, and another act passed in England for that of the episcopal, with one final enacting clause, ratifying the whole. To the recital there could be no objection, as it contained only matter of fact, and the opposition had not strength sufficient to withstand the general enacting clause. Taken altogether by surprise, they could only cry out that it was a shame to carry a measure of such importance through the parliament "post haste;" and that, sir Thomas Littleton said he thought a very unconscionable cause of complaint; "for," replied he, as long as the weather is fair, the roads good, and the cattle in heart, there is nothing like driving on till we reach the end of our journey."

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In the house of lords it was more stiffly contested by a small but respectable minority. Lord Haversham was entirely against an incorporating union, when he saw the whole population of Scotland so completely against it; "let it be a union of interest," said he, a federal union as close and as intimate as it can be made; but for independent nations, each possessed of sovereignty, having different laws, customs, and church government, to mingle together as one kingdom, he thought the motion too heterogeneous to be lasting; and for this he had the high authority of lord Bacon, who, speaking on this very subject, observed, that 'an unity that is forced up by a direct admission of contraries

in the fundamental points of it, is like the toes of Nebuchadnezzar's image, made of iron and clay-they may cleave together, they can never incorporate.' He dreaded also disaster to the English constitution, the most equal and best poized government in all the world—the peculiar excellency of which lies in the well-proportioned distribution of its powers, whose balance might be destroyed by the enormous weight of sixty-one Scots members. Nor could he pass

over the evil which must result from establishing a precedent by which one hundred Scottish peers, and as many commoners, were excluded from the parliament, whose rights were as strongly formed and secured to them by the fundamental laws of their kingdom as any who sat by inheritance or choice in these houses; and if, in the face of an act of the Scottish legislature declaring it treason to make any alteration in their constitution, the Scottish peers could lose their privileges, what security had the English or British nobility that they would retain their own ?" To all which one general answer was given ;-that so great an object as uniting the whole island into one kingdom could not be obtained without some inconveniences; if, therefore, the advantages exceeded, the lesser evil must be borne. The dangers to be most dreaded were a popish succession, and the power of France; and whatever provided against these ought to be hailed as the greatest blessing:-that Scotland was placed on the side where England was weakest, and where it could not be defended but by a large force; that the collieries on the Tyne lay exposed for several miles, the defence of which would of itself require an immense army and expenditure; and should even Scotland be conquered, in the event of a war, that would not much reduce either-for the Scottish could not be kept in subjection but by the same means, and the danger of keeping up a standing force in the hands of any prince was perfectly obvious. The articles were therefore approved by overwhelming majorities; and-as in Scotland-a few protests only bore record to the ineffectual resistance of the disaffected, whose scruples and fears being more groundless, were treat