1704 THE SCOTS ACT OF SECURITY. 97 V. moment when a hostile movement, as the queen's message CHAP. had reminded parliament, was expected from France, was out of the question. It was agreed therefore that the Scots ministry should unanimously represent the dangerous condition of affairs to the queen, and recommend her to pass the Act of Security. The moment at which this advice was laid before the disgusted queen was critical in the history of England. It was the end of July, 1704. Marlborough was marching to the Danube, and the existence of the English ministry hung upon his success. His defeat would in all probability be followed by a French invasion of Scotland, and such was the suspicion felt against England across the border that the Scots might decline the aid of English troops to preserve them from the pretender. No resort seemed to be left but to deal with the more immediate danger, to preserve the union of the kingdoms during the queen's life, even at the cost of sacrificing it after her death. On August 6-17, a few days before the news of Blenheim reached England, Godolphin advised the queen to pass the Act of Security. Scarcely was the ink dry on the parchment when a revulsion of feeling set in. The news of Blenheim transformed the English political horizon. A country which had shattered France had nothing to fear from Scotland. The surrender of Godolphin, but a few days before unavoidable, now appeared a gratuitous humiliation. The English parliament met on October 29, O.S., and Lord Haversham, a political stormy petrel, brought on a debate in the house of lords upon Scottish affairs. The time had arrived for the whigs to decide whether they would continue Godolphin in office, or withdraw their support and watch his downfall. There were comings and goings between the whig leaders and the lord treasurer. The intermediary was Lord Monthermer, afterwards Marlborough's son-in-law, and in 1709 Duke of Montagu. Meanwhile a full-dress debate was fixed for November 29. The queen, anxious to retain Godolphin, now began the practice of attending debates upon important occasions, hoping that her presence might mitigate the severity of the attacks upon him. The opposition was led by Nottingham and Rochester. On the other side, Somers 1A "downright submission," in her opinion, to the cavaliers and Jacobites. Seafield MSS., pp. 203-4, Hist. MSS. Comm., 14th Rsp., App., iii. V. CHAP. urged counsels of moderation. No good could arise out of criticisms of the acts of the Scots parliament, over which the parliament of England could pretend to no sort of jurisdiction. Such proceedings would be futile sources of irritation. It was a wiser course for England to demonstrate that if it came to a war of retaliations, the Scots would be “the greatest losers by it". That the burning desire of Scotland was admission to free trade with England and her colonies every one knew. The diversions suggested by Somers would set the Scottish instinct for trade against the Scottish instinct for punctilio. A series of resolutions was passed by the lords on December II, of which the first was once more to empower the crown to nominate commissioners to treat for a union. In the meanwhile, Scotsmen should not enjoy the privileges of Englishmen unless naturalised and permanently resident, or in the sea or land service, “ until a union be had or the succession settled as in England". The importation of cattle from Scotland should be prohibited, and the exportation to Scotland of English wool, the raw material of its manufactures. The admiralty were to be instructed to provide cruisers to suppress the trade still surreptitiously carried on between Scotland and France. In short, Scotland, in default of union, should be treated on the footing she had assumed for herself, that of an independent and rival nation. The tories were not slow to excite their own imaginations and those of their constituents with apprehensions of a Scottish invasion.1 As a concession to popular feeling the house of lords voted to address the queen praying for repairs to the fortifications of Newcastle, Carlisle, and Hull, for the raising of the militia of the four northern counties, for the maintenance of "a competent number" of regular troops in the north of England and of Ireland, and for the disarming of papists. Bills were draughted by the judges in conformity with the lords' resolutions. The first, for an entire union, was read a third time on December 20 and sent down to the commons. When, however, a bill followed incorporating the other resolutions and inflicting penalties on default, the commons conceived their privilege of exclusively originating money bills to 1See a letter from Edward Repington to Thomas Coke, M.P., December 1, 1704, in Coke MSS.; cf. Cowper MSS., iii., 53. 1704 ENGLAND RETALIATES ON SCOTLAND. 99 V. be assailed. But public opinion would not tolerate a state CHAP. of suspense which would have been involved in an irreconcilable attitude towards the ministry. Marlborough had returned to England on the 14th-25th, the popular idol. London exulted in the spectacle of a procession bearing from the Tower to Westminster Hall the trophies of victory on January 3, 1705. Three days later another pageant accompanied the duke to his entertainment by the city of London at the Goldsmiths' Hall. It was not a moment to choose for trying a fall with Godolphin with the nation's hero at his back. All that the commons could do was to accept the lords' bills in substance, though, to save their face, they formally redraughted them. They were then sent up to the lords in the form of one original bill. One addition of importance was made. It was resolved to shew Scotland that the more compliant disposition of the Irish legislature was reaping its reward. A clause was inserted prohibiting the importation of Scotch linen into England and Ireland. At the same time an act was passed opening the West Indies to Irish linen carried in English bottoms. All Scotsmen should be reputed as aliens unless the succession of the crown of Scotland followed the English precedent.1 These retaliatory measures added to the bitterness already manifested in Scotland. By the nomination of the Marquis of Tweeddale, the leader of the "flying squadron," as high commissioner in 1704, it had been hoped that a middle party would be formed of sufficient strength to carry the settlement of the succession, which the queen at this time had strongly at heart." The politics of dilettantism yield in stress to the politics of resolution, and the new queen's servants" in Scotland only contrived to remain on amicable terms with the opposition by the concession of the Act of Security. It had become even more evident in Scotland, where the pretender's friends were numerous, than in England, that the cause of the protestant succession must be entrusted to the party to whose existence it was vital, to the presbyterians in religion and the whigs in politics. At the head of this party, the most representative of the nation, 13 & 4 Anne, c. 7. 2See her instructions to the Earl of Seafield, the Scots chancellor, April 5, 1704, Seafield MSS., p. 194. V. CHAP. stood John Campbell, second Duke of Argyll. He was but twenty-seven years of age; but his territorial influence, his wealth, and the eminent services of his family to the whig cause marked him out as its natural leader. He was nominated, in place of Lord Tweeddale, the queen's commissioner for 1705. The Duke of Queensberry, as an astute manager of the place hunters and pensioners to whom the favours of the court were the goal of a political career, regained office as lord privy seal. Early in the year 1705 an unfortunate incident irritated public feeling in both Scotland and England. In retaliation for the seizure, at the instance of the London East India Company, of a Scottish interloper in the Thames, the Scottish African and East Indian Company arrested an English vessel called the Worcester, which had been driven into the Firth of Forth, and tried the captain and crew for piracy and murder. By English procedure the prosecution would have failed to prove their case, there being no sufficient evidence of the identity of the vessel upon which the piracy was alleged to have been committed, nor that the captain was really murdered. Nevertheless on March 14, the captain and fourteen of the crew were condemned to death and the sentence was applauded in Scotland with passionate enthusiasm. The guilt or innocence of Captain Green became an international question. The ministers in London transmitted to Scotland affidavits showing his innocence, and that the captain, Drummond, supposed to have been murdered by him, was alive in Madagascar.1 The Scottish ministry replied that "there was no possibility of preserving the public peace without allowing some that were thought most guilty to be executed "2 Three victims were selected to gratify the national thirst for blood, and died protesting their innocence, which was confirmed more than twenty years later. On February 27, O.S., 1706, the Scots commissioners were appointed for the treaty of the union. The selections were made with a wise discrimination. Mere irreconcilables, like Lord Belhaven and Fletcher of Saltoun, were excluded; otherwise the fractions of the Scottish parliament were all repreRented. Even Lockhart of Carnwath, a Jacobite, was included. Neapeld MSS., p. 196. * Chancellor Seafield to Godolphin, April 11, 1705, Burton's Queen Annè, 1706 THE COMMIssioners fOR UNION: 101 The V. Of the thirty-one commissioners seventeen were commoners, CHAP. some of them small landowners, others officials in the depart ments of law or finance. Most of the peers held office. thirty-one English nominations were made by Godolphin and Harley, who were themselves of the number. They consisted largely of whig aristocrats, the two archbishops, Cowper, the new lord keeper, the two chief justices, John Smith, the new speaker, and the law officers. The commissioners sat for the first time on April 16 in the council chamber at the Cockpit, near Whitehall. The first proposal came from the Scots. It was for a union of a federal nature, in which Scotland, while enjoying the advantages reserved for English subjects, should retain its own parliament. But from the outset the English commissioners were firm that a union meant a union of parliaments. Without that, admission to England's colonial trade, the bait which whetted Scotch appetites, was out of the question. Declining to consider the Scots' proposal, they submitted a counter-proposal for a union of kingdoms and parliaments under the crown as limited by the English Act of Succession. This the Scots accepted with a proviso for their free admission to English trade at home and in the colonies. The constitutional principle having been agreed upon, subsequent proceedings resolved themselves into estimates of the financial consequences to Scotland. Hitherto the burden of expenditure had fallen upon England. Its debt exceeded £17,700,000, while that of Scotland was £160,000. The proportions of revenue raised by taxation were ludicrously unequal, the landowners of England, for example, paying £2,000,000 land tax, while those of Scotland paid but £3,600 yearly. If Scotland were to take a share of the English debt, what compensation should she have? If she should come under the burden of English taxation, what proportion should she bear? Upon all these matters the English commissioners exercised a wise generosity. In the matter of taxation they conceded abatements and remissions. As compensation for the liabilities undertaken they fixed a sum called "the equivalent" of £398,085 to be paid by England at the union. It was agreed that this should be applied towards providing Scotland with a new coinage, paying up in full the shareholders of the bankrupt Scotch African Company, |