Art. 9.-THOUGHTS ON THE PARLIAMENT OF SCOTLAND. 1. The History of Scotland. Second Edition. Vols VII, VIII. By John Hill Burton. Vols VII, VIII. Blackwood, 1873. 2. The Scottish Parliament before the Union of the Crowns. By Robert S. Rait. Blackie, 1901. 3. The Unreformed House of Commons. Two vols. Vol. II. Porritt. 4. History of Scotland. By P. Book vi; Vol. III, Book vii. 1909. By Edward Camb. Univ. Press, 1903. 5. The Scottish Parliament: Its Constitution and Procedure, 1603-1707. By Charles Sanford Terry, M.A. Maclehose, 1905. 6. An Historical Account of the Rise and Development of Presbyterianism in Scotland. By Lord Balfour of Burleigh. Camb. Univ. Press, 1911. 7. The Legislative Union of England and Scotland. By P. Hume Brown. Oxford Univ. Press, 1914. 8. Parliamentary Representation in Scotland. By Robert S. Rait. (Scottish Historical Review, Jan., April, and Oct. 1915.) Maclehose, 1915. THE Imperial Parliament of to-day has been created by the union of three legislative bodies belonging to three different countries, namely, the Parliament of England, the Parliament of Scotland, and the Parliament of Ireland. Any educated Englishman is convinced, often quite erroneously, that he understands the growth and the working of England's Constitution. Through the course of recent events, the history of the Parliament of Ireland, though he generally reads it wrong, has been forced upon his attention; and the knowledge, slight though it be, of that history is made the easier because the Parliament of Ireland was, like so many other parliaments, an imitation, though a misdeveloped copy, of the Parliament of England. Of the old Parliament of *The word 'Parliament' is throughout this article used as meaning, in accordance with current phraseology, when applied to Scotland, the House of Parliament, and when applied to England or Ireland, the two Houses of Parliament. See Dicey, 'Law of the Constitution,' 8th ed., pp. xviii and xxv, note 1. Scotland he till recently knew little or nothing, and would often be found to confuse the Union of Crowns, which marked the year 1603, with the Union of Parliaments which belonged to the year 1707. This ignorance of educated Englishmen was encouraged, if not excused, by the want of interest in Scottish constitutionalism displayed by eminent English writers. Hallam was an author in advance of his time. But in his 'Constitutional History of England,' a work of about 1300 pages, he dedicates but seven pages to the Constitution of Scotland. Freeman's admirable 'Growth of the English Constitution' contains little, if any, reference to either of the great Acts of Union which gave birth to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Macaulay, the most brilliant, the most parliamentarian, and still in virtue of his genius the most influential, among the historians of England, though he knew the facts of Scottish history, had not even in 1852 discovered, till it was revealed to him by Burton,* the now open secret that one main explanation of the Union between England and Scotland lay in the urgency of the Scots for participation in the English trade.' Bagehot, the most original among the thinkers of genius who since the time of Burke have analysed the working of the English Constitution, had, though he lived till 1877, paid little attention to the way in which the two Acts of Union have told upon the development of 'I remember,' writes Burton, upwards of twenty years ago a talk with the great historian of the English Revolution. . . . He said he believed I had been studying the Union; he was yet far off from that period, but he saw some points of difficulty. One was that, although the Union was notoriously unpopular in Scotland, yet there were symptoms of pressure on the side of Scotland in its direction. He had thought whether this might be the action of the Episcopalian party to obtain protection from England, but that did not seem a satisfactory explanation. I said I believed he would find a simple solution in the urgency of the Scots for participation in the English trade, and that he would find his way to this solution in the laws of the Protectorate and those of the Restoration. I find in a short letter from him, dated 20th November, 1852, immediately on returning to his own books-"I have looked into the question of the commercial relations between England and Scotland after the Restoration. You were quite right, and the subject is full of interest." How affluently he would have made the world a participator in this full interest had his days not then been numbered, can only be matter of regretful conjecture.' -Burton, viii, p. 3, note 1. representative institutions which were, at one time, of purely English growth. In truth the success of the Union with Scotland has concealed the greatness of the obstacles which it overcame, and has propagated an idea, for which there is no true justification, that the political unity of separate countries, each endowed with a representative Parliament, is a matter of easy accomplishment. During the last thirty years or more, the parliamentary annals of Scotland have been the subject of assiduous and most fruitful research. My aim is to summarise some few of the results of this investigation, and to show that the development, and even the arrested development, of the Scottish Parliament, from the Union of Crowns in 1603 to the passing of the Act of Union in 1707, worked towards the success of the arduous and, as it at one time seemed, hopeless attempt to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain. This end I hope to attain by the statement and elucidation of a few leading thoughts as to some of the peculiar characteristics of the Scottish Parliament during the century following upon 1603.* First Thought.-From 1603 to 1689-90 the Scottish Parliament did not exercise anything like predominant authority either in the making of laws for, or in the administrative government of, Scotland. From 1603, and indeed from a far earlier period, the Scottish Parliament passed many laws, and often very good laws, but the Scottish Parliament did not before the Revolution of 1689-90 in reality govern Scotland. For the Parliament's action, even as a legislature, was controlled by the Committee known as The Committee of the Lords of the Articles,' or 'The Lords of the Articles.'† This Committee constitutes by far the strangest and the most original creation to be found in the whole Scottish constitution. The Parliament had from early times shown a marked willingness to confer power and even legislative authority upon parliamentary * Little reference is made throughout this article to legislation passed or constitutional changes made during the revolutionary period from 1638 to 1660. † Sometimes, even in Acts of Parliament, called simply 'The Articles.' committees. This disposition to favour government by a body selected from the Parliament itself reached its height in the creation of the Lords of the Articles. The special function of this Committee, which, as Prof. Rait has shown, had a close connexion with the King's Council, was to prepare the 'Articles' or, to use an English term, the 'Bills,' which were to be submitted to the Parliament for acceptance or rejection, and which, if accepted by the Parliament and sanctioned by the King, would become Acts of Parliament. The Committee was, during the period with which we are concerned, regularly elected at the commencement of each new Parliament, and had power to act until that Parliament was dissolved.* The Committee was carefully constructed so as to represent each class of which the Parliament consisted, and generally contained somewhere about 40 members, ranging from 39 at the lowest, to 43 at the highest. To understand the position of the Committee, it must be remembered that the Parliament was a OneHouse Parliament, and was never, as regards numbers, an unwieldy or an unmanageable body. Prior to the Restoration (1660) it never in number exceeded 183, and often consisted of only about 150 members. After the Restoration the Parliament only twice exceeded 190 members, and the Parliament of 1703-6 averaged only about 226 members. Now, it is pretty certain that on almost any mode of choice the Lords of the Articles would bring to the work of legislation as much of official knowledge and of legislative ability as could be found among any 200 Scotsmen of the day. If the Committee had merely prepared the Bills to be submitted to Parliament there would have been nothing very peculiar in its position. The extraordinary importance of the Committee arose from its exercising almost the whole legislative authority * See Terry, p. 119. ↑ See particularly Terry, p. 108, and take as an example of the constitution and number of the Committee, the election thereof for 1612, in which the Peers number 8, the Bishops 8, the County members 8, the Burgh members 9, the Officers of State 7, making 40 in all. Unless we had sought for them in the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. But this Assembly was never looked upon with favour by any Stewart before 1690. of the Parliament. Upon the election of the Lords of the Articles the action of the Parliament for the moment ceased. It did nothing, as a rule, by way of debate or otherwise, till it was summoned, say after a week or two, to meet again. The Bills prepared by the Committee were at such meeting submitted to the Parliament, and without debate or amendment accepted or rejected by the Parliament. If accepted and then assented to by the King, they became the enacted law of the land. And we may assume that acceptance was far more usual than rejection. Parliament, in short, had little voice in the matter of legislation beyond saying Aye or No to the Articles or Bills submitted to it. The person, or body of persons, who could control the Committee possessed for practical purposes the control of the Parliament. The whole working of such a system depended upon the way in which the Committee was appointed; and from 1603 to 1689-90-the revolutionary period (1640– 1660) of course excepted-the appointment lay in the hands of the King. James VI (in common with every man who had held executive power since the Committee came into existence) had taken care, since the time when he held anything like real power, to secure for himself the nomination of the Lords of the Articles. He achieved this end by a method singularly characteristic of his combined cleverness and unwisdom. In 1606, and probably in 1607 and 1609, he nominated the members who were elected. In 1612 he partially revived and partially invented the following plan of appointment. There were at this date very few prelates in existence; they were all the King's creatures. The peers, as he arranged it, were to choose the Lords spiritual who should form part of the Committee. Any bishop whom the peers chose would be of necessity not disagreeable to the King. The bishops were in turn to select the peers who should sit for the Committee. They were certain to choose men as obsequious to the King as themselves. These chosen representatives of the bishops and the nobles were to select the most suitable members of Parliament, whether burgh members or county members, to be Lords of the Articles. These again were sure to be persons pleasing to the King. He himself |