either needed for the glory, or suited to the interests of England; and it is as much from a desire to avert that ultimate forcible and most painful conversion of all the national energies to warlike objects, as to prevent the immediate calamities which it would occasion, that we earnestly press upon the country the immediate adoption, at any cost, of that great increase to our naval and military establishments which can alone avert one or both of these calamities.

THE OLD SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT

[BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, Nov. 1834]

"THE Scotch," says O'Connell, to one of his well-informed assemblies, "boast of having never been subdued by the English, and of having owed all their prosperity to the maintenance of their independence: I will tell you the reason why they were never conquered their country was not worth conquering." (Loud applause.) These words convey a clear idea of the composition and knowledge of the assemblies which he is desirous of rearing up to supreme dominion in the state. In this way did the Great Agitator flatter the vanity of his Irish followers, by insinuating that they had fallen a victim to England, because their country presented too fair a spoil to its rapacity; while the Scotch had maintained a savage independence only from having possessed nothing which was worth the taking. Many of our own unworthy compatriots have given too great currency to the same idea, by their unfounded and monstrous assertions, that the original institutions of Scotland were the height of human absurdity, a compound of feudal tyranny and savage violence; and that all the prosperity which now distinguishes its surface is to be ascribed to the union with England, and the fortunate tempering of the rigour of its native customs thence arising, by the liberal intermixture of Southern freedom. In this perverted and ignorant abuse of the Scottish institutions, the late Lord Advocate (Jeffrey) took the lead. He declared in his place in Parliament, during the debate on the Reform Bill, that "he would tear to pieces its electoral institutions; he would not leave one shred or patch standing." And he has kept his word; for certainly not one vestige of the ancient Scottish

constitution is now remaining. Now that the thing has been done, and the domestic revolution of Scotland rendered complete, it may not be unprofitable to take a survey of the institutions framed, and the laws passed, by a legislature so much the object of vituperation, and see whether they really deserve the censures at the hands of the friends of freedom which, during the contests of faction, have been so liberally applied to them.

We take for granted, that the proper object of government in every state is ut cives feliciter vivant; that the greatest possible facility should be given to the industry and exertions of the people; that they should enjoy all the freedom consistent with their own welfare, or the general stability of society; and that the security of their persons and property should be rendered complete. On these points we cordially agree with our opponents; the only difference betwixt us is as to the means by which these objects are likely to be attained. Let us consider what the Scottish nation and the Scottish legislature have done on these points, as compared with those of England and Ireland, before we join in the sweeping condemnation so plentifully applied to them by the Liberals in our own and the neighbouring countries.

What the Scottish nation has done to maintain its independence is well known to every person having the most slender historical information. It is a pleasant interlude in a speech, doubtless, for Mr O'Connell to tell his Irish supporters that the Scotch were never conquered because they were not worth conquering; but if he had read the annals of his own or the neighbouring state, he would have learned, that while Ireland was conquered at once by Henry II. with 1100 knights and 2000 foot-soldiers, and has ever since been retained in subjection by a force inconsiderable, indeed, when compared with the magnitude of its population, Scotland has been invaded, not once, but twenty times, by English armies, sixty, seventy, and eighty thousand strong, and on all these occasions they were, in the end, baffled and repulsed; that, though never possessing a fifth part of the population of England, nor a tenth part of its wealth, she maintained during three centuries (from 1300 to 1600) an almost uninterrupted struggle with her gigantic

neighbour; that the utmost efforts, during this long period, were made by the English monarchs, and made in vain, for her subjugation; that if she suffered during this long period much devastation and injury from the English arms, she inflicted nearly as much as she received; and that, though often reduced to grievous straits from the divisions and treachery of her nobles, the sterility of her soil, and the indiscipline of her armies, she was to the last unsubdued, and finally saw her own monarchs ascend the throne of the three kingdoms. He would have learned that the power which at once beat down the clans of Ireland, which waged a doubtful war of a hundred and twenty years' duration with France, which repeatedly marched across the whole territory of that great nation, crowned its own king within the walls of Paris, and exhibited that of its first-rate opponent a captive within those of London, was never able permanently to subdue a foot of Scottish land; that the splendid chivalry of England ever recoiled in the end from the stubborn spearmen of Scotland; that the greatest defeat recorded in the English annals came from the unconquerable bands of Robert Bruce, and that it required all the glories of Cressy, Poitiers, and Azincour, to blazon over the fell disaster of Bannockburn. It is truly a proof of the march of intellect, of the prodigious spread of information which the diffusion of newspapers and the growth of democracy have produced, to see a popular Irish demagogue venture to hazard the assertion, before a meeting of electors in the British dominions, that Scotland was never conquered because it was not worth the taking; and to hear that sentiment applauded by an assembly in a nation which was conquered by eleven hundred knights, and has never since been able to face five English brigades, in presence of the descendants of those who hurled back twelve English invasions, many of them led by English monarchs, at the head of forces twice as numerous as the British who vanquished Napoleon on the field of Waterloo.

It is another proof of that vast diffusion of historical and political information, from the agency of the popular press, to hear the assertion so generally believed which was hazarded by the same learned Lord Advocate in Parliament,

that Scotland had never evinced the spirit of genuine freedom, and that a total subversion of all its institutions was essential to the development of that necessary element in social prosperity. Doubtless that learned lord, when he hazarded that assertion in such an assembly, was fully acquainted with the facts, and had many examples in his eye to corroborate the assertion. He probably grounded his allegation as to the total want of a free or independent spirit in Scotland, upon the singularly tame and feeble efforts which Scotland made in behalf of the Reformation; upon the timidity and irresolution displayed by the Covenanters in the mountains of Ayrshire; upon the influence retained by its hierarchy in the formation of the Reformed church, and the entire absence of anything like republican equality in the constitution of its General Assembly. Or did he found it upon the weak and insufficient support which the Scotch gave to the cause of freedom during the Great Rebellion; the Scotch who first took up arms against the government of Charles I., who brought the whole array of their nation to the heights of Lauder, when as yet not one sword had been drawn or musket fired to the south of the Tweed; and alone, by their seasonable support, gave victory to the sinking cause of freedom in England at Marston Moor? Or had the learned lord in his eye the stubborn and desperate resistance opposed by the Covenanters of Scotland to the cruelties and the severity of Charles II., or the memorable declaration from the Scottish Estates that James II. had forfeited his title to the throne in 1688, when the English only ventured to assert that he had deserted it; or the free and independent manner in which the Scottish Parliament tied up the most dangerous powers of government by the Act 1701, the Habeas Corpus Act of Scotland, and a more effectual safeguard of the liberty of the subject than even that celebrated bulwark of English freedom? The learned lord will not surely deny to the heroes of July, the citizens of the barricades, on whom he pronounced so eloquent a eulogium in August 1830, the praise of being actuated by an independent spirit; but yet these boasted defenders of freedom have never yet passed any similar law for the security of that first of blessings, the freedom of the subject;