The Union Commission at Westminster—The Act of Union passed—Belhaven’s Speech—Violent conduct of Fletcher and other Members during the Debates.

When the English Parliament met in October, not only the Alien clause, but all the hostile clauses of which the Estates complained, were repealed. Whether Fletcher was pleased that the object of his motion was so completely and speedily gained may be doubted; but there was now nothing to prevent the progress of the negotiations for the Union. So the Commissioners of both nations met at Westminster on the 16th of April 1706.

The result of their labours still remains. The question which they had to face was how to adjust the relations of the two countries in a manner consistent with a complete Union. It was not enough to say that there was to be one Sovereign, one Parliament, and equal trading privileges. The Union meant far more than that. Although the machinery of Government and the modes of social life were simpler then than they now are, the problem of applying the principle of a full and incorporating Union to the usages of the two nations was one of the most formidable character. The institutions and the internal economy of the two peoples were, in many respects, entirely different. If they were to be really united, if they were to become one people in their interests and their aspirations, it was necessary that, at the commencement of their common national life, there should be a clear understanding of the precise terms on which they stood to one another. The difficulty of arriving at such an understanding was enormous. The one nation was rich, the other was poor. In what proportions were they to contribute to the common treasury? Each had a public debt; but the debt of England was far heavier than the debt of Scotland; and some equitable adjustment of the national liabilities must be arranged. Each nation had its own laws. Were these to be assimilated, or left unchanged? What was to be the form of that one Parliament, on which the responsibility of enacting laws for the United Kingdom was now to be devolved? Was there to be one executive for England, and another for Scotland? The incidence of taxation was different in each country. The customs and the excise and the manner of their collection was different. The coinage of England was different from that of Scotland. All these matters were now to be considered and adjusted, if possible, in a fair and reasonable manner; so that the Articles of Union should be ratified by the two Parliaments, and favourably received by the nations. Such were some of the difficult questions which were discussed by the Union Commissioners at Westminster from April to July 1706; and the famous Treaty of Union, the result of their deliberations, is, upon the whole, one of the most successful works of practical statesmanship which the world has ever seen.

On Monday the 22nd of July 1706 the Commissioners of both Kingdoms met at Westminster and signed the Treaty of Union; and on the following morning they went to St. James’s, and presented the document to her Majesty.

The Scottish Parliament was to meet upon the 3rd October, and the Government wished to keep the Articles of Union secret until then. No copies of the Treaty were allowed to pass into circulation. A proclamation forbidding the making of wagers upon the subject was strictly enforced, and a strong effort was made to prevent the publication of writings about the Union. But it was, of course, impossible to stop the discussion of so momentous a question; all the more, as many persons were in possession of the main outlines of the Treaty. The Whigs had already made up their minds that the Articles would be ratified by the Estates; and even the most violent members of the Jacobite and Country Parties saw that the general feeling of Scotland was now favourable to the Union, a fact which Lockhart explains by saying that false accounts of the Articles were given by the Scottish Commissioners on their return from England. ‘We have,’ Halifax writes, ‘all the reason to promise ourselves success in an Union with Scotland. All the letters from that country give us great hopes that it will be accepted by their Parliament.’[16]

In the discussions which now took place, the community seems to have been divided into three classes: those who were distinctly in favour of an Union, those who were distinctly opposed to it, and those who were in favour of an Union, provided the separate Parliament of Scotland was allowed to remain. If Fletcher was the author of a pamphlet which has been attributed to him, entitled, The State of the Controversy betwixt United and Separate Parliaments, he must be reckoned as amongst the last class; and, indeed, he seldom expressed any opinion which was not consistent with supporting a federal Union. But it is very doubtful whether he wrote this pamphlet. He was, however, supposed to be writing, while the Commission was sitting at Westminster, in favour of a dissolution, on the ground that the question could only be lawfully settled by a Parliament elected for that purpose by the constituencies.[17] But, though the press was busy printing pamphlets on the subject of the Union, the time for such discussions was past, and everything depended on what was done on the floor of the Parliament House.

During the discussions on the Articles of Union Fletcher displayed the same courage, and the same defects of temper, as during the previous sessions of the Parliament. Sir David Hume, in his diary, frequently mentions the scenes in which the member for Haddingtonshire was the leader. For instance, on one occasion, when it was proposed that a sermon should be preached, on a ‘Fast Day,’ in the Parliament House, a proposal which was supported by some lay members of the Commission, or Standing Committee, of the Church of Scotland, ‘Salton having alleged that if he would tell what he knew, those of the Commission who were for that manner of the Fast would be ashamed to hold up their faces; he being challenged by several honourable members of the House, who were also members of the Commission, the business was with some struggle let fall.’ On the next day after this incident, Fletcher, in attacking the Commissioners on Union, said they had ‘betrayed their trust.’ He was called to order, but said he was ‘sorry he could not get softer words.’ Then it was moved that he should be sent to the bar; but at last he was persuaded to say he was sorry if he had offended any one, and the matter dropped.

On another day Hume describes how, when he entered the Parliament House, he found an altercation going on, apparently over the Minutes of the last sitting. Fletcher said, ‘What my Lord Stair has said in reference to the Minutes is not true.’ To this Stair answered that he ‘desired the House to take notice of what Salton had said; otherwise he would be obliged to say what he had said was a lie.’

There was an hour’s ‘discourse’ about this; and then they were both called upon to ask pardon of the House. Fletcher at once apologised to the House, but ‘shifted, craving Stair’s pardon.’ Stair then said, ‘If what he had said offended the House, he craved pardon.’ The Chancellor next appealed to Fletcher. He said he ‘hoped Salton would acknowledge that he meant no reflection on my Lord Stair, but only to contradict the thing he had said, and if he had given him any offence he craved his pardon, which,’ Sir David goes on, ‘Salton assented to, and both of them gave their word of honour not to resent it without-doors.’ There were many scenes of this description during the last session of the Scottish Parliament. The passion with which the debates were conducted was extraordinary. It was sometimes difficult to hear a word of what was said. ‘Scandalous disorder,’ in the words of one member, challenges to fight on the floor of the House, shouting, interruptions, calls to order, Hamilton, whose voice was very loud, overbearing his opponents by sheer strength of lung, Fletcher springing to his feet, ready, at a moment’s notice, to draw his sword,—it was amidst all this clamour and noise that the Union was debated.

Perhaps the stormiest sittings of all that stormy session were those of the 2nd and 4th of November, when the first Article of Union was debated and voted on. It was on the first of these days that Belhaven made his great oration. It was certainly the event of that day; and it is generally spoken of as the greatest speech delivered during the debates on the Union. But we have no means of knowing whether this was the case; for no materials exist from which we can judge of the eloquence of Stair, whom all the writers of his time agree in describing as an orator of surpassing power, the greatest that ever spoke under the roof of the Parliament House. And though the palm of oratory belonged to Stair, he was not without rivals. When Roxburghe spoke, he charmed even his opponents. The speeches of Argyll were full of passionate vehemence. Hamilton’s pathetic eloquence is the theme of every Jacobite pen. Nor can it be doubted that Seafield and Cockburn of Ormiston were adroit and ready debaters; while Fletcher’s speeches in the session of 1703 are, so far as polished language and close reasoning go, superior to any of Belhaven’s.[18] But of all that was said in the debates of these two days, only two speeches have been preserved in full. The speech of Seton of Pitmedden, a plain country gentleman, is one of them. Its solid reasoning and sound conclusions, which events have justified, did not catch the public fancy. On the other hand, the speech of Belhaven, full of predictions, every one of which time has falsified, was eagerly received, was read by thousands, and is still to be found, in more than one reprint, in every private library in Scotland. Belhaven was a great actor; but it is one thing to gain applause, and another thing to gain votes. Burke producing a dagger on the floor of the House of Commons, Brougham kneeling on the woolsack, are examples, in more recent times, of how little impression is produced by the display of dramatic powers; and, both in its composition and its effects, it is as a theatrical display that the famous speech of Belhaven must be regarded.

On the same day Fletcher spoke, ‘with great warmth,’ says Cunningham, ‘and vehemently reproached and inveighed against the Queen’s Ministers, without any regard to his own fortune, though very large. Some there are who say that he was too hot in his arguments, and too violent in his resentments, and that he did thereby hurt his own cause.’

But the cause was past helping or hurting now. The time for argument was gone. It was on Saturday the 2nd of November that Fletcher and Belhaven poured forth the vials of their wrath; and on the following Monday the vote was taken. As is well known, the Squadrone threw in their lot with the Government, and the majority, by which the Union was supported during the rest of the session, was secured.

From that time until the 16th of January 1707, when the Treaty of Union was finally approved by the Estates, Fletcher continued to oppose the Government. As soon as the Act approving of the Treaty, with the changes made in it by the Estates, had been touched with the sceptre, it was sent up to London, to be discussed in Parliament; and the Estates continued to sit for the transaction of formal business, and also to frame the Acts of Parliament which were to regulate the method of electing the sixteen representative peers and the forty-five commoners who were to represent Scotland in the Parliament of Great Britain.

Fletcher’s last piece of business in the Scottish Parliament was to move, ‘That no peer, nor the eldest son of any peer, can be chosen to represent either shire or burgh of this part of the United Kingdom in the House of Commons.’ This motion was rejected, by a majority of thirteen, in favour of an amendment providing that the elections for counties and burghs in Scotland should continue, as regards those who were capable of electing or being elected, on the same footing as before the Union.

Fletcher may have been present, on the 19th of March, when the Act of the English Parliament ratifying the Treaty of Union was presented to the Estates; but, according to tradition, he left Edinburgh immediately after the House rose. ‘On the day of his departure, his friends crowded around him, entreating him to stay. Even after his foot was in the stirrup, they continued their solicitations, anxiously crying, “Will you forsake your country?” He reverted his head, and darting on them a look of indignation, keenly replied, “It is only fit for the slaves that sold it!” then leaped upon the saddle and put spurs to his horse, leaving the whole company struck with a momentary humiliation, and (blind to the extravagance of his conduct) at a loss which most to admire, the pride of his virtue, or the elevation of his spirit.’[19]

And so, to the intense indignation of Fletcher, the old Scottish ‘Estates’ became a thing of the past. It would be difficult to find, in the history of any other country, laws more harsh and sanguinary than the long series of enactments which the Parliament of Scotland had passed for the purpose of suppressing liberty and increasing the power of the Crown. The independent spirit of the English people had constantly been reflected in the independent spirit of the English Parliament. The Scottish Parliament had been, before the Revolution, submissive to tyranny, because it did not fairly represent the people, and because of the defects which were engrained in its constitution. It had been a Parliament of which the only function, except on a few memorable occasions, was to pass, almost in silence, the laws which had been prepared by the King’s servants. It sat for only a few days in each session, and free debate was almost unknown. The franchise by which the county and burgh members were elected was always in the hands of a few persons; and latterly, although a majority of the Scottish people were Presbyterians, no one who was not an Episcopalian could be either an elector or a member. The savage laws, therefore, which were passed, and which have frequently been quoted for the purpose of proving the slavish spirit of the Estates, were just the laws which, in an age of violence, might be expected to proceed from a legislature which represented only a tyrannical minority in the country. There were, indeed, times when the Scottish Parliament threw off the yoke. In the reign of Charles the First it extorted from the weakness of the King concessions which would never have been obtained by an appeal to his clemency; and in the reign of James the Second even the Lords of the Articles refused to act any longer as the blind tools of despotic power. The occasions, however, on which the Estates resisted the royal authority had been few. There is, nevertheless, a brighter side to the picture; for the Scottish statute law relating to private rights was equal, if not superior, to anything which the English Parliament had produced at the close of the seventeenth century. Wonder has often been expressed at the marvellously concise language of the Scottish Acts of Parliament. But the explanation is very simple. Each statute was the work of one or two thoroughly trained lawyers, who knew exactly what they wished to say, and whose productions were not afterwards subjected to the unskilled criticism of a large assembly.

It is curious to remember that this admirable system of laws was the handiwork of the very men who were foremost in the business of suppressing the liberties of the nation. The period between the Restoration and the Revolution, every page of whose history is stained by crimes perpetrated under the sanction of the law, was the Augustan age of Scottish jurisprudence; and the rolls of the Scottish Parliament during these years are full of statutes, dealing with almost every department of the law, and containing provisions which conferred real benefits on all classes of the people.

Apart, then, from those laws which were destructive of public liberty, the Scottish Parliament had done good work for Scotland even under the Stuarts. It was now free; and what Fletcher resented was not the Union with England, by which Scotland gained a great deal, but the destruction of the Scottish Parliament, which had become, not only the symbol of national independence, but a real instrument of self-government. It was evident that the wishes of the Scottish people could never prevail at Westminster, even in matters which concerned Scotland alone, against the prejudices or the ignorance of Englishmen, when Scotland was represented by only forty-five commoners and sixteen peers. But the Treaty had been ratified, and there was nothing more to be said.