254

nlSTOUY OF ENGLAND.

chap.

XIII.

1689 .

The Restoration came, and changed every thing. The Scotsregained their independence, and soon began to find that in-dspendence had its discomfort as well as its dignity. TheEnglish parliament treated them as aliens and as rivals. A newNavigation Act put them on almost the same footing with theDutch. High duties, and in some cases prohibitory duties,were imposed on the products of Scottish industry. It is notwonderful that a nation eminently industrious, shrewd, andenterprising, a nation which, having been long kept back by asterile soil and a severe climate, was just beginning to prosperin spite of these disadvantages, and which found its progresssuddenly stopped, should think itself cruelly treated. Yetthere was no help. Complaint was vain. Retaliation was im-possible. The Sovereign, even if he had the wish, had not thepower, to bear himself evenly between his large and his smallkingdom, between the kingdom from which he drew an annualrevenue of a million and a half and the kingdom from which hedrew an annual revenue of little more than sixty thousandpounds. He dared neither to refuse his assent to any Englishlaw injurious to the trade of Scotland, nor to give his assent toany Scotch law injurious to the trade of England.

The complaints of the Scotch, however, were so loud thatCharles, in 1667, appointed-Commissioners to arrange theterms of a commercial treaty between the two British kingdoms.The conferences were soon broken off; and all that passedwhile they continued proved that there was only one way inwhich Scotland could obtain a share of the commercial pros-perity which England at that time enjoyed.* The Scotch must

Edinburgh, 169G. See the Proceedings of the Wednesday Club in FridayStreet, upon the subject of an Union with Scotland, December 1705. Secalso the Seventh Chapter of Mr. Burton’s valuable History of Scotland.

* See the paper in which the demands of the Scotch Commissionersare set forth. It will be found in the Appendix to De Foe’s History of theUnion, No. 13.