a great measure, like Mr. Bruce, it is only information of a particular complexion that can be expected.

With respect to the consequences of the union, a considerable time elapsed, as will always be the case in such circumstances, before those happy effects took place which the measure was so fitted to produce. For this part of the subject I must refer you to Laing, who is indeed too concise and too general in this very interesting part of his work, but who is an intelligent writer, and who at least gives more information on the point than others.

The history of Scotland becomes, about the time of the Revolution, interesting to mankind, for it becomes connected with the Revolution in England, an event in which the best interests of human nature were deeply concerned. If Scotland had not sufficiently sympathised with England, if William had not been acknowledged, and if, afterwards, the Protestant line of succession had not been established in both parts of the island; if a civil war had ensued, and if the hardy and enthusiastic Jacobites of the north had been joined by their affluent and powerful neighbours, the Jacobites of the south, the exiled family might at last have been restored, the Revolution might have failed, and been a standing example for the generous and brave in every age and country, of the difficulties which attend all enterprises for the liberty of the people; enterprises alike accompanied, it would have been said, with disappointment and ruin, whether attempted by Hampden and the patriots in the time of Charles, or by Lord Somers and King William in the reign of James.

Happily an issue so deplorable was escaped, but the manner in which it was escaped gives an importance to this period of the history of Scotland which I think may well claim your attention, and which might, I must also think, have deserved the labours of Dr. Robertson. The subject, however, devolved upon Mr. Laing, and his very respectable history, particularly the second volume, I cannot but request you to peruse.

I am hastening to my conclusion, but I must take this, my

only opportunity to say, in a few words, what I have to offer with respect to this interesting country of Scotland. Its history will of course be read in Dr. Robertson, and as his work is one of the most early books that is put into our hands, it must be read anew, for it is read before it can be understood. The history indeed presents a turbid and repulsive scene, which would have been little known to the inhabitants of this country, and still less to the readers of the continent, if the picture of it had not been drawn by so masterly a hand, and if a ray of softer and more attractive light had not been shot athwart the gloom by the beauty and sufferings of the unfortunate but not faultless Mary.

Those difficulties with which Dr. Robertson had to struggle, arising from the rude nature of the documents from which his history was to be drawn up, and which necessarily constitute so much of the merit of the work, cannot well be known by an English reader, but they may be distantly comprehended from the account of his life by Dugald Stewart, which should on this and many other accounts be read. Much of this sort of merit belongs also to Mr. Laing. By the labours of the two the public are put into possession of the whole of the history of Scotland that is important to us, and are furnished with what is valuable in those original materials which no philosophic diligence or taste for historical inquiry would ever have induced readers on this side the Tweed to estimate or examine for themselves.

The first part of the history of Scotland is discussed only in a rapid and general manner by Dr. Robertson. The real subjects of his work are very properly the Reformation, Elizabeth, and Mary. At the close of the whole there are a few pages by way of conclusion that are highly worthy of your meditation; but to these must be added the first one hundred pages of the third volume of Millar's Account of the English government, for these supply, what cannot be so well found elsewhere, philosophic remarks and information on the constitution and government of Scotland.

The student cannot fail to keep in mind the history of the legislature and parliaments of his own country while he is reading that of Scotland.

The fortunate manner in which our own parliament fell into two houses, and remained not, as in Scotland, united in one house, again presents itself to our observation, and its consequences to our reflection. The peculiarity in the Scotch parliament of the lords of articles is also remarkable, and in its history full of instruction.

On the whole, Scotland, as a country, has not been fortunate. May her subsequent prosperity reward, however late, the intelligence and courage by which her sons are distinguished!

She was placed, from the first, in proximity with a powerful state; a situation most unfavourable. For a long series of years she had her monarchy and her aristocracy, but though they were directly opposed, and each abated the tyranny of the other, unhappily no other power in the state ever seemed to exist. The people were nothing. Even the union of the two crowns in the person of our James I. was unfavourable to her liberties; and it was not till the Revolution in 1688 that the interests of the people began to be considered a late period this in the history of Europe.

In the general struggle and contests that accompanied the Reformation, that Christian church, the Presbyterian, which, after the greatest calamities and the exercise of the most elevated virtues, she at last acquired for herself, as what she thought best, though not without its own very important merits, had been long distinguished for harshness, fanaticism, and intolerance. The union of the two kingdoms in the reign of Anne improved her condition in all these respects, but improved it slowly. Her system of law ever was and has still remained tedious, inconvenient, and expensive; her system of representation wretched. The consequences of such a system have been but too inevitable. While her moral and political writers are of the most enlightened, bold, and gene

rous cast, and are only accused of pushing the principles of speculation and inquiry too far, her practical statesmen and politicians have been in general remarkable chiefly for their selfishness and servility; and the same union of the two countries which has added strength and range to our philosophy, fervour to our poetry, and spirit to our arms, has certainly not been favourable to the political morality, and therefore not favourable to the civil liberties of England.

LECTURE XXVI.

SIR ROBERT WALPOLE.

HAVING delivered to you what I have to offer on the subject of the union of Scotland, we must now return to the history of England, which we left at the accession of George I. The first object that claims our attention is the violence of the Whigs on their restoration to power. Of this violence, among the most durable monuments must be mentioned the articles of impeachment against Oxford, Bolingbroke, and Ormond, and the report of a Committee of the House of Commons commissioned to collect and examine such documents as were connected with the peace of Utrecht. report and these articles become interesting from the great events to which they relate, and the distinguished characters whose private integrity and political reputation are concerned-Prior, Bolingbroke, Oxford; and lastly, their accusers, the great leaders of the Whig party, Walpole and others.

This

It must be confessed that these documents are much degraded by the foul insinuations and expressions of virulence which they contain; but suppose these terms of virulence, these serious accusations made by the Whigs undeserved, there will still remain a very heavy weight of blame to be endured by the Tory leaders. They might not merit the title which they sometimes received of "the Frenchified ministry;" they might not have been guilty (I use the language of their Whig opponents) "of forming, without regard to the honour or safety of her late Majesty, maliciously and wickedly a most treacherous and pernicious contrivance and confederacy to set on foot a dishonourable and destructive