■WILLIAM AND MABY.

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were rapidly doing what the carnage of Falkirk and Halidon, of chap.Flodden and of Pinkie, had failed to do. Scotland had some ’experience of the effects of an union. She had, near forty yearsbefore, been united to England on such terms as England,flushed with conquest, chose to dictate. That .union was in-separably associated in the minds of the vanquished people withdefeat and humiliation. And yet even that union, cruelly as ithad wounded the pride of the Scots, had promoted their pros-perity. Cromwell, with wisdom and liberality rare in his age,had established the most complete freedom of trade betweenthe dominant and the subject country. While he governed, noprohibition, no duty, impeded the transit of commodities fromany part of the island to any other. His navigation laws imposedno restraint on the trade of Scotland. A Scotch vessel was atliberty to carry a Scotch cargo to Barbadoes, and to bring thesugars ofBarbadoes into the port ofLondon.* The rule of theProtector therefore had been propitious to the industry and to.the physical well-being of the Scottish people. Hating him andcursing him, they co uld not help thriving under him, and often,during the administration of their legitimate princes, lookedback with regret to the golden days of the usurper. **

* Scobell, 1654, cap. 9., and Oliver’s Ordinance in Council of the 12thof April in the same year. *

** Burnet and Fletcher of Saltonn mention the prosperity of Scotlandunder the Protector, but ascribe it to a cause quite inadequate to theproduction of such an effect. “There was,” says Burnet, “ a considerableforce of about seven or eight thousand men kept in Scotland. The pay oftiie army brought so much money into the kingdom that it continued all

that while in a very flourishing state. Wo always reckon those

eight years of usurpation a time of great peace and prosperity.” “Duringthe time of the usurper Cromwell,” says Fletcher, “ wb imagined ourselvesto be in a tolerable condition with respect to the last particular (trade andmoney) by reason of that expense which was made in the realm by thoseforces that kept us in subjection.” The true explanation of the phenome-non about which Burnot and Fletcher blundered so grossly will be foundin a pamphlet entitled, “Some seasonable and modest Thoughts partlyoccasioned by and partly concerning the Scotch East India Company,”

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