was received with a feeling amounting almost to satisfaction.  The first English Parliament of Queen Anne agreed to the appointment of commissioners to discuss terms of union, and the Estates of Scotland chose representatives to meet them.  But the English refused to give freedom of trade, and so the negotiations broke down.  In reply, the Scottish Parliament removed the restrictions on the import of wines from France, with which country England was now at war.  In the summer of 1703 the Scots passed an Act of Security, which invested the Parliament with the power of the crown in case of the queen’s dying without heirs, and entrusted to it the choice of a Protestant sovereign “from the royal line”.  It refused to such king or queen, if also sovereign of England, the power of declaring war or making peace without the consent of Parliament, and it enacted that the union of the crowns should determine after the queen’s death unless Scotland was admitted to equal trade and navigation privileges with England.  Further, the act provided for the compulsory training of every Scotsman to bear arms, in order that the country might, if necessary, defend its independence by the sword.  The queen’s consent to the Act of Security was refused, and the bitterness of the national feeling was accentuated by the suspicion of a Jacobite plot.  Parliament had been adjourned on 16th September, 1703.  When it met in 1704 it again passed the Act of Security, and an important section began to argue that the royal assent was merely a usual form, and not an indispensable authentication of an act.  For some time, it seemed as if the two countries were on the brink of war.  But, as the union of the crowns had been rendered possible by the self-restraint of a nation who could accept their hereditary enemy as their hereditary sovereign, so now Queen Anne’s advisers resolved, with patient wisdom, to secure, at all hazards, the union of the kingdoms.

It was not an easy task, even in England, for there could be no union without complete freedom of trade, and many Englishmen were most unwilling to yield on this point.  In Scotland the difficulties to be overcome were much greater.  The whole nation, irrespective of politics and religion, felt bitterly the indignity of surrendering the independent existence for which Scotland had fought for four hundred years.  It could not but be difficult to reconcile an ancient and high-spirited people to incorporation with a larger and more powerful neighbour, and the whole population mourned the approaching loss of their Parliament and their autonomy.  Almost every section had special reasons for opposing the measure.  For the Jacobites an Act of Union meant that Scotland was irretrievably committed to the Hanoverian succession, and whatever force the Jacobites might be able to raise after the queen’s death must take action in the shape of a rebellion against the de facto government.  It deprived them of all hope of seizing the reins