XI. 1706. BOOK tirely to the English market. The exportation of wool must be prohibited, and its manufacture discouraged, to supply the monopoly of the English staple: but before the acquisition of skill and industry, what benefit can result to our infant mapufactures, from a privilege to enter into a competition with English manufactures, in the English market? Our trade at present is small, yet improveable; exempt from restriction. But if we prefer a single customer to the rest of Europe, will the benefit of a plantation trade, of which the returns are circuitous, remote, and uncertain, compensate the quick returns and the rapid circulation of a trade nearer home? The spirit of commercial enterprise, so lately excited, requires the fostering care and protection of parliament; instead of which it is subjected to the accumulated debts, and crushed in its infancy beneath the oppressive taxes of a foreign legislature, indifferent to its success. Can the poor endure an enormous excise, or the taxes on salt and malt, which are suspended insidiously till the nation is better inured to the yoke? Are the rich aware of the future growth of the public debt, and the increase of taxes, from wars in which the nation has no concern? But an equivalent is offered, to serve at once as a fund for taxes, and a capital for trade. An equivalent for submitting to the debts of England, must be repaid with interest in a few years: but this strange equivalent is advanced for the arrears and losses of a few individuals, not to the nation at large, on whose posterity the debts are entailed for ever. An immense bribe is thus offered which the nation must refund; and the chartered rights of its trading companies, to preserve the exclusive trade of the English, must be purchased up at its own expence. But what equivalent is given for the removal of the seat of government, for the surrender of the parliament, of the national independence, and constitutional rights? A slight addition is made to the English parliament, equivalent to a single creation of peers, and to the representation of a single county in the house of commons. But in Scotland, every estate in parliament, every county and corporation is disfranchised. The inherent birthright of the nobility is forfeited, to create a mongrel species of elective peers: and from the extreme disproportion of representatives, instead of meeting on equal terms, the nation, after the privileges which it surrenders, is reduced to depend, like a conquered province, upon the generosity, the good faith, or the discretion of an English parliament, for the rights which it reserves. If a dispute should occur respecting its religion, its laws, or the privileges of its peerage, will the English prove more observant of the articles of union than the Scottish parliament of its own constitution and fundamental laws? Or, in a question respecting their own rights, can the English expect that the repre BOOK XI. 1706. XI. 1706. BOOK sentatives from Scotland will be more tenacious of the constitution to which they are admitted, than of the one which they have destroyed? It will then be found, from their dependence on the court, that their number is sufficient to corrupt the rights of the English, not to preserve their own. But for those by whom the nation is betrayed and sold, to affirm that its independence and sovereignty are ideal rights, which it is unable to preserve, what is it but to convert their own crimes and corruption into reasons of state? Independence and sovereignty are of little value in themselves; but it is the sense of national independence in which the energy and the free spirit of a people, and all that is great and patriotic, reside. Let us establish, said the marquis of Anandale, the same succession with England; let our crown be annexed to hers; let our treaties, alliances, and wars, be the same. But let us preserve and im prove our constitution and parliament; nor, for dangerous, or at least precarious innovations, resign our independence, without which the spirit of a nation becomes poor and languid, sunk and degraded even in its own esteem 1. Lord Belhaven's speech. 61 Methinks I see a free and independent kingdom, said the patriotic lord Belhaven, delivering up the great object of dispute among nations, for which the world has ever been fighting, and all Europe is 61 Sir J. Clerk's Hist. Lockhart. De Foe, passim. Pamphlets on the Union. I XI. 1706. at present engaged in war; the power to manage BOOK their own affairs without assistance or control. see the present peers of Scotland, whose ancestors have exacted tribute through England, walking like English attorneys in the court of requests; while at home a petty English exciseman shall receive more homage and respect than were ever paid to the greatest of their progenitors. I see the estate of barons, the bold assertors of our liberties in the worst of times, setting a watch upon their lips, and a guard upon their tongues, to avoid the penalties of unknown laws; and the burrows, walking through their desolate streets, drooping under disappointments, and wormed out of the branches of their former trade. I see the honest and industrious tradesman, loaded with new taxes and impositions, disappointed of the equivalent, eating his saltless pottage, and drinking water instead of ale. I see the incurable difficulties of the landed gentry, fettered with the golden chain of equivalents; their daughters petitioning for want of husbands, and their sons for want of employment. But above all, I see our ancient mother Caledonia, like Cæsar, sitting in the midst of our senate, looking mournfully around, covering herself with her royal garment, and breathing out her last words, And thou too, my son! while she attends the fatal blow from our hands. Patricide is worse than parricide; to offer violence to our country is worse than to our parents. But shall we whose XI. 1706. BOOK predecessors have founded and transmitted our monarchy and its laws entire, to us a free and independent kingdom, shall we be silent when our country is in danger, or betray what our progenitors have so dearly purchased? The English are a great and glorious nation. Their armies are every where victorious; their navy is the terror of Europe; their commerce encircles the globe, and their capital has become the emporium of the whole earth. But we are obscure, poor, and despised, though once a nation of better account; situate in a remote corner of the world, without alliances, and without a name. What then can prevent us from burying our animosities, and uniting cordially together, since our very existence as a nation is at stake? The enemy is already at our gates! Hannibal is within our gates! Hannibal is at the foot of the throne, which he will soon demolish, seize upon these regalia, and dismiss us never to return to this house again! Where are the Douglases, the Grahams, the Campbells, our peers and chieftains, who vindicated by their swords, from the usurpation of the English Edwards, the independence of their country, which their sons are about to forfeit by a single vote? I see the English constitution remaining firm: the same houses of parliament; the same taxes, customs, and excise; the same trading companies, laws, and judicatures; whilst ours are either subjected to new regulations, or annihilated |