MEETING OF THE LAST SCOTTISH PARLIMENT.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1985, 23 April 1906, Page 7

MEETING OF THE LAST SCOTTISH PARLIMENT.

' On October 3, 170(5, the Duke of : Queensberry, as Lord Commissioner for the Queen, opened the last Session of the last Parliament that ever sal in Scotland. Queensberry, who, with the Earl of Stair, had been on the commission, and had laboured hard to bring it to a satisfactory issue, now laid the articles of the \ Treaty before the Parliament, expressing his conviction that the j Queen would take care to have it i carried out with the utmost imparti iality and care for the rights of all : her subjects. The Commissioner then j read the Treaty, and it was o roe red ! to be printed and put into the hands ; of all tlie Members of Parliament. No ; sooner were the printed copies in the I hands of the public men than the tempest burst forth. The Dukes of Athol and of Hamilton, the Lords l Annandale, Belhaven, and other vioi lent .Jacobites, represented the whole ! affair as most injurious and disgraceI ful : that it had, at one blow, desI troyed the independence of Scotland, | which for 200 years had defended her I liberties against all the armies and intrigues of England ; that now it I had been delivered over by these j traitors —the Commissioners —bound ! hand and foot, to the English ; that ! the few members that were to represent Scotland in the English Parliament would be just as many slaves or automata —have no influence whatever ; that Scotland would, by the arrangement send only one more member to the House of Commons than Cornwall, a single county of England ; and that the Scotch must expect to see their sacred kirk again ridden over by the English troopers, and the priests of Baal forcibly installed in their pulpits. From this time to November 1 the fury of the people continued to increase, and the utmost was done to rouse the old Cameronian spirit in the West of Scotland by alarming rumours of the intention of England to restore episcopacy by force ; so that tin- whole country was in a flame. Put the intentions of the opponents to involve the country in chaos and bloodshed, and so to ruin the treaty, were defeated. The Presbyterians kept quiet for they saw too many of their real enemies, the Jacobites, the Nonjurors, and the Papists, busy in these incendiary manoeuvres, to believe that it meant, any good. On the. other hand, the English Government saw the advantage of distributing a liberal sum of money amongst the patriots of Scotland, consequently £20,000 was sent down for this purpose, and thi' passage of the Act of Union was aided by a still more liberal distributution of promises of places, honours, and of compensation to those who had been sufferers in the Darien scheme. By these means the opposition was sufficiently soothed to enable the Ministers to carry the Treaty by a majority of 110. An Act was prepared for regulating the election of the sixteen peers and the '■ forty-five commoners to represent Scotland in the British Parliament, and on March 25, 1707, the Scotish Parliament rose, never to meet again