of power, and of using the machinery of government in Scotland for the good of their cause—­a coup d’etat of which the Act of Security gave considerable chance.  On this very account the triumphant Presbyterians were anxious to carry the union scheme, and the correspondence of the Electress Sophia proves that the negotiations for union were looked upon at Hanover as solely an important factor in the succession controversy.  But the recently re-established Presbyterian Church of Scotland regarded with great anxiety a union with an Episcopalian country, and hesitated to place their dearly won freedom at the mercy of a Parliament the large majority of whom were Episcopalians.  The more extreme Presbyterians, and especially the Cameronians of the west, were bitterly opposed to the project.  They protested against becoming subject to a Parliament in whose deliberations the English bishops had an important voice, and against accepting a king who had been educated as a Lutheran, and they clamoured for covenanted uniformity and a covenanted monarch.  By a curious irony of fate, the Scottish Episcopalians were forced by their Jacobite leanings to act with the extreme Presbyterians, and to oppose the scheme of amalgamation with an Episcopalian country.  The legal interest was strongly against a proposal that might reduce the importance of Scots law and of Scottish lawyers, while the populace of Edinburgh were furious at the suggestion of a union, whose result must be to remove at once one of the glories of their city and a valuable source of income.  There was still another body of opponents.  The reign of William had been remarkable for the rise of political parties.  The two main factions were known as Williamites and Cavaliers, and in addition to these there had grown up a Patriot or Country party.  It was brought into existence by the enthusiasm of Fletcher of Saltoun, and it was based upon an antiquarian revival which may be compared with the mediaeval attempts to revive the Republic of Rome.  The aim of the patriots was to maintain the independence of Scotland, and they attempted to show that the Scottish crown had never been under feudal obligations to England, and that the Scottish Parliament had always possessed sovereign rights, and could govern independently of the will of the monarch.  They were neither Jacobites nor Hanoverians; but they held that if the foreign domination, of which they had complained under William, were to continue, it mattered little whether it emanated from St. Germains or from the Court of St. James’s, and they had combined with the Jacobites to pass the Act of Security.