what band to turn to, necessitated to become prentices to their unkind neighbours, and yet, after all, finding their trade so fortified by companies, and secured by prescriptions, that they despair of any success therein. I think I see our learned judges laying aside their practiques and decisions, studying the common law of England, gravelled with certioraries nisi priuses, writs of error, verdicts indover, ejectione firma, injunctions, demurs, &c. and frighted with appeals and avocations, because of the new regulations and rectifications they may meet with. I think I see the valiant and gallant soldiery either sent to learn the plantation trade abroad, or at home petitioning for a small subsistence as the reward of their honourable exploits; while their old corps are broken, the common soldiers left to beg, and the youngest English corps kept standing. I think I see the honest industrious tradesman loaded with new taxes and impositions, disappointed of the equivalents, drinking water in place of ale, eating his saltless pottage, petitioning for encouragement to his manufactories, and answered by counter petitions. In short, I think I see the laborious ploughman with his corn spoiling upon his hands for want of sale, cursing the day of his birth, dreading the expense of his burial, and uncertain whether to marry or do worse. I think I see the incurable difficulties of the landed men, fettered under the golden chain of equivalents, their pretty daughters petitioning for want of husbands, and their sons for want of employments. I think I see our mariners delivering up their ships to their Dutch partners, and what through presses and necessity, earning their bread as underlings in the royal English navy. But above all, my lord, I think I see our ancient mother Caledonia, like Cesar, sitting in the midst of our senate, ruefully looking round about her, covering herself with her royal garment, attending the fatal blow, and breathing out her last with a et tu quoque mi fili.

Are not these, my lord, very afflicting thoughts? And yet they are but the least part suggested to me by these dishonourable articles. Should not the consideration of these things vivify these dry bones of ours? Should not the memory of our noble predecessors' valour and constancy rouse up our drooping spirits? Are our noble predecessors' souls got so far into the English cabbage-stock and colliflowers, that we should show the least inclination in that way? Are our eyes so blinded, are our ears so deafened, are our hearts so hardened, are our tongues so faltered, are our hands so fettered, that in this our day, I say my lord, that in this our day, that we should not mind the things that concern the very being and well-being of our ancient kingdom, before the day be hid from our eyes? No, my lord, God forbid, man's extremity is God's opportunity. He is a present help in time of need, and a deliverer, and that right early. Some unforeseen providence will fall out, that may cast the balance; some Moses or other will say, "Why do ye strive together since ye are brethren?" None can destroy Scotland, save Scotland's self, hold your hands from the pen, you are secure. Some Judah or other will say "Let not our hands be upon the lad, he is our brother. There will be a Jehovah Jireh, and some ram will be caught in the thicket when the bloody knife is at our mother's throat, let us up then, my lord, and let our noble patriots behave themselves like men, and we know not how soon a blessing may come."

This was only the exordium of his lordship's speech, intended "to encourage a free and full deliberation, without animosities and heats." Full of this happy idea he proceeds, "That I may path a way, my lord, to a full and calm reasoning this affair, which is of the last consequence unto this nation, I shall mind this honourable house that we are the successors of our noble predecessors, who founded our monarchy, framed our laws, amended, altered, and corrected them from time to time, as the affairs and circumstances of the nation did require, without the assistance or advice of any foreign power or potentate, and who, during the time of two thousand years, have handed them down to us a free independent nation, with the hazard of their lives and fortunes. Shall not we then argue for that which our progenitors have purchased for us at so dear a rate, and with so much immortal honour and glory? Shall the hazard of a father unbind the ligaments of a dumb son's tongue, and shall we hold our peace when our patria is in danger?" After much more to the same purpose, he adverts to the divisions which prevailed over the whole island, and to the immense wealth and growing prosperity of the English nation, in consequence of which, he thinks it will be hard to persuade them to a self-denial bill.

"It is quite otherwise," he continues, "with us, my lord, we are an obscure poor people, though formerly of better account, removed to a remote corner of the world, without name, and without alliances, our posts mean and precarious, so that I profess I do not think any one post of the kingdom worth the briguing after, save that of being commissioner to a long session of a factious Scots parliament, with an antedated commission, and that yet renders the rest of the ministers more miserable. What hinders us, then, my lord, to lay aside our divisions, to unite cordially and heartily together in our present circumstances, when our all is at the stake. Hannibal, my lord, is at our gates! Hannibal is come within our gates! Hannibal is come the length of this table! he is at the foot of this throne! he will demolish this throne! If we take not notice, he'll seize upon these regalia, he'll take them as our spolia opima, and whip us out of this house never to return again.” *

This, with a great deal more to the same purpose, delivered with all the pomp of action, for his lordship, in the course of his speech, fell upon his knees and implored, paused, and wept-could not fail to produce a very powerful effect. Seton of Pitmedden rose to reply, but was prevented by the house, as contrary to the rule, that no member should speak twice in one day upon the same subject. The altercation which this occasioned, necessarily cooled the state of feeling into which the members had been wrought, and the earl of Marchmont, being declared in possession of the floor, by a reply odd and laconic, gave it at once an entirely opposite direction. "We have heard," said his lordship, "a very long speech, but it requires only a very short answer, Behold he dreamed, but lo! when he awoke, he found it was a dream." The house was at once convulsed with laughter, and time has completely justified the severity of his lordship's remark. Other speakers, however, succeeded, and the

Defoe's Minutes of the Proceedings of the Scotish Parliament upon the Articles of Union, folio ed. pp. 33-39.

debate was adjourned till Monday, the fourth of November, when the first article was carried by a plurality of thirty-three voices. The duke of Athol entered his protest against this article, "As contrary to the honour, the interest, and fundamental laws and constitution of this kingdom, the birthright of the peers, the rights and privileges of the barons and boroughs, as contrary to the claim of right, property, and liberty of the subject, and third act of her majesty's parliament, 1703," &c. &c. To this protest, there adhered twenty-one lords, thirty-three barons, and twenty-nine burgesses, in all eighty-three.* It had been previously agreed

• To avoid repetition of names, we shall give the following list of the Scotish parliament as they divided on the first Article of the Union, November 4th, 1706, and upon all subsequent divisions the lists were nearly the same. No. I. Those who voted for the Article. No. II.-Those who voted against it. The duke of Queensberry, being lord commissioner, had no vote, but he requested his name on every decision to be added to the list of approvers.

Sir Robert Dicksone of Inverask.
William Nisbet of Dirletoun.
John Cockburn, Jun. of Ormiston.
Sir John Swinton of that ilk.

Sir Alexander Campbell of Cesnock.
Sir William Ker of Greenhead.
Archibald Douglas of Cavers.
William Bennet of Grubbet.
John Murray of Bowhill.
John Pringle of Haining.

BARONS.

William Morrison of Preston Grange.
George Baillie of Jerviswood.
Sir John Johnstoun of Westerhall.
William Douglas of Dornock.

William Stewart of Castle Stewart.
John Stewart of Sorbie.
Francis Montgomery of Giffan.
John Montgomery of Wrae.
Sir Robert Pollock of that ilk.

Sir Patrick Johnstoun.
John Scrymsour.

William Dalrymple of Glenmuir.
John Hadden of Glenagies.
Mungo Grahame of Gorthy.
Sir Thomas Burnet of Leyes.
William Seton, jun. of Pitmedden.
Alexander Grant, jun. of that ilk.
Sir Kenneth Mackenzie.
Eneas Macleod of Catbol.
John Campbell of Mammore.
Sir James Campbell of Auchinbreck.
James Campbell, jun. of Ardkinglass.
Sir William Anstruther of that ilk.
James Halyburton of Pitcur.

Alexander Abercrombie of Glassoch.
William Maxwell of Cardross.
James Dunbar, jun. of Hemprigs.
John Bruce of Kinross.

Mr. Robert Stuart of Tillycoultry.

that the state of this, and all the succeeding votes, and a list of the members as they voted, should be regularly printed.

It was at this stage of the business that the act of security for the kirk was engrossed, and here the cavaliers exerted themselves for presbytery to the very utmost, offering and pressing many additional clauses to the act for its preservation, which could not be supposed to find much favour with those presbyterians who saw their meaning, which was not to secure presbytery, a system they had always considered as their bane, but to prevent the union, by irritating England, and by so stating

the articles as might secure their being rejected there in the end. Accordingly, lord Belhaven "did protest in his own name, and in name of all those who shall adhere to him, that this act is no valid security to the church of Scotland as it is now established by law in case of an incorporating union, and that the church of Scotland can have no real, solid security by any manner of union by which the claim of right is unhinged, our parliament incorporated, and our distinct sovereignty and independency abolished." This protest was adhered to by the principal leaders of the party, who were decided episcopalians, and had English episcopalians been equally void of honour and conscience with themselves, their opinion had certainly proved correct, as was mournfully experienced when the party, many of them the same individuals, attained to a share in the government a few years afterwards.

The second article, which established the succession to the crown as the same was established in England, was, if possible, still more keenly debated than the first. The cavaliers here recurred to their old scheme of limitations upon the successor, suited as they pretended, to the state and circumstances of the country; and here, as in the case of presbytery, arguing in the very teeth of their known principles, they advanced, almost in their abstract forms, many of the boldest and most startling doctrines of liberty, not that they really understood or relished these doctrines, but fearing that the English succession was to be adopted after all, they wished to extinguish the prerogatives of the crown out of hatred to Hanover, for if their darling James did not obtain it, the more contemptible it could be made, so much the better for them. They were on this occasion again supported by lord Belhaven, in the following singular strain of argument :- "I desire," said his lordship, " to be resolved what are the motives that should engage us to take England's succession upon their own terms? Is it not strange that no answer should be given to this question, save that when you come to consider the rest of the articles, you shall be satisfied on that demand. This is a new way of arguing, my lord,—a method without precedent, transversing nature; and looks more like design than fair play. I profess I think the huge and prodigious rains that we have had of late, have either drowned out, or found out another channel for reasoning than what was formerly, for by what I can see by this new method, the agreeing to the first article shall be a sufficient reason for agreeing to the second, and the agreeing to the second for the third, and so for all. If there was ever such a farce acted, if ever reason was Hudibrased-this is the time. Consult all the treaties since the beginning of the world to this day, and if you find any one precedent, I shall yield the cause.

"I shall instance, my lord, one for all, and that is the first and worst treaty ever was set on foot for mankind; and yet, I am sorry to say it, there appears more ingenuity in it than our procedure. When the serpent did deceive our mother Eve, he proposed three advantages before he presumed to advise her to eat the forbidden fruit. The first was taken from the sight, the second from the taste, and the third from the advantage following thereupon. That from the sight was enforced by a 'behold how lovely and comely a thing it is,' it is pleasant to the eye

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