Union of England and Scotland – 2

There was still worldS of business to be transacted in details of the unattractive kind that belong to accountants’ reports.

Continuing Union of England and Scotland,
our selection from John Hill Burton. The selection is presented in easy 5 minute installments.

Previously in Union of England and Scotland.

Time: 1707
Place: British Isles

There was stills world of business to be transacted in details of the unattractive kind that belong to accountants’ reports. These may be objects of vital and intense interest — as in the realizing of the assets in bankruptcies, where persons immediately interested in frantic excitement hunt out the array of small figures — two, three, four or five — that tells them whether they are safe or ruined. But the interest is not of a kind to hold its intensity through after generations. On some items of the present accounting, however, there was, in the principle adopted, a fund of personal and political interest. The heavy debts of England had to be considered — and here, as in all pecuniary arrangements, England was freehanded. The Scots made an effort to retain their African Company but they fortunately offered the alternative of purchasing the stock from the holders. On the alternative of retention the English commissioners were resolute in refusal and resistance but they were ready to entertain the other; and they accepted it in a literal shape. To have bought the stock at its market value would have been a farce, after the ruin that had overcome the company. But if it could not be even said that England had ruined the company, the sacrifice had been made in the prevalence of English interests and while there was yet a hold on England it should be kept. There was no difficulty in coming to a settlement satisfactory to the Scots and willingly offered by the English. It was substantially payment of the loss on each share, as calculated from an examination of the company’s books.

The adjustment of the several pecuniary claims thus created in favor of Scotland was simply the collective summation of the losses incurred by all the stockholders; and when the summation was completed the total was passed into a capital sum, called the “Equivalent.” This sum total of the various items, with all their fractions, making up a fractional sum less than four hundred thousand pounds, might be otherwise described as a capital stock held by the shareholders of the old company trading to Africa and the Indies, each to the extent of his loss. Odious suspicions were, down to the present generation, propagated about an item or group of items in the Equivalent. A sum amounting to twenty thousand five hundred forty pounds seventeen shillings sevenpence had been made over by the English treasury, to be paid to influential Scotsmen as the price of their votes or influence in favor of England.

Fortunately this affair was closely investigated by the celebrated committee of inquiry that brought on Marlborough’s dismissal and Walpole’s imprisonment. It was found that the Scots treasury had been drained; and the crisis of the union was not a suitable time either for levying money or for leaving debts — the salaries of public offices especially — unpaid. England, therefore, lent money to clear away this difficulty. The transaction was irregular and had not passed through the proper treasury forms. It was ascertained, however, that the money so lent had been repaid. In discussions of the affair, before those concerned were fully cleared of the odium of bribery, taunting remarks had been made on the oddity and sordid specialties of the items of payment. Thus the allowance to the Lord Banff was, in sterling money, eleven pounds two shillings. It would have had a richer sound and perhaps resolved itself into round numbers, in Scots money; but as it is, there is no more to be said against it than that, as a debt in some way due to the Lord Banff, the exact English book-keeper had entered it down to its fraction.

There remained a few matters of adjustment of uniformities between the two countries for the advantage of both — such as a fixed standard for rating money in account. The Scots grumbled, rather than complained, about the English standard being always made the rule and no reciprocity being offered. But the Scots were left considerable facilities for the use of their own customs for home purposes in pecuniary matters and in weights and measures. If, for the general convenience of commerce and taxation, any uniformity was necessary and the practice of the greater nation was a suitable standard for the other, it was the smaller sacrifice and to both parties the easier arrangement, that those who were only an eighth part of the inhabitants of the island should yield to the overwhelming majority.

It was in keeping with the wisdom and tolerance prevailing throughout on the English side of the treaty that it should be first discussed in the Parliament of Scotland. If this was felt as a courtesy to Scotland it was an expediency for England. All opposition would be in Scotland and it was well to know it at once, that disputes might be cleared off and a simple affirmative or negative presented to the Parliament of Scotland.

The Parliament of England has ever restrained vague oratory by a rule that there must always be a question of yes or no, fitted for a division as the text of a debate. In Scotland on this occasion, as on many others, there was at first a discussion of the general question; and when this, along with other sources of information, had given the servants of the Crown some assurance of the fate of the measure, there was a separate debate and division on the first article, understood on all hands to be a final decision. The debate was decorated by a work of oratorical art long admired in Scotland and indeed worthy of admiration anywhere for its brilliancy and power. It was a great philippic — taking that term in its usual acceptation — as expressing a vehement torrent of bitter epigram and denunciatory climax.

The speech of John Hamilton, Lord Belhaven, “On the subject-matter of a union betwixt the two kingdoms of England and Scotland,” was so amply dispersed in its day that if a collector of pamphlets on the union buys them in volumes he will generally find this speech in each volume. It is, no doubt, an effort of genius; but what will confer more interest on the following specimens selected from it is that it was an attempt to rouse the nation to action at this perilous and momentous crisis and succeeded only in drawing attention and admiration as a fine specimen of rhetorical art:

Continued.

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