land and Scotland, and the difficulties presented by the
differences between the Scotch law and the English law. Porteous was
tried and condemned naturally by Scotch law, and many, if not most, of
the English advocates of the Bill seemed to find it hard to put it out
of their heads that because the trial was not conducted in accordance
with the principles of English legislation it could possibly be a fair
or a just trial.

If the Bill was calculated to irritate the susceptibilities of the
Scotch peers, there were attendant circumstances still more irritating.
The three Scotch judges were summoned from Scotland to answer certain
legal questions connected with the debate. On their arrival a fresh
debate sprang up on the question whether they should be {67} examined
at the Bar of the House of Lords or upon the wool-sacks. The Scotch
peers considered it disrespectful to their judges to be examined at the
Bar of the House of Lords, and urged some of their arguments against it
in terms of ominous warning. It is curious to find a speaker in this
debate telling the Government that the strength of the legal union that
existed between England and Scotland depended entirely upon the way in
which the people of Scotland were treated by the majority in the two
Houses. If any encroachment be made, the speaker urged, on those
articles which have been stipulated between the two countries, the
legal union will be of little force: the Scotch people will be apt to
ascribe to the present royal family all the ills they feel or imagine
they feel; and if they should unanimously join in a contrary interest
they would be supported by a powerful party in England as well as by a
powerful party beyond the seas. For such reasons the speaker urged
that any insult, or seeming insult, to the people of Scotland was
especially to be avoided, and any disrespect to the Scotch judges would
be looked upon by the whole nation as a violation of the Articles of
Union and an indignity to the Scottish people.

The use of such words in the House of Lords within two-and-twenty years
of the rising of 1715 ought to have been found most significant. No
one who was present and who heard those words could guess indeed that
within eight more years Scotland and England would witness a rising yet
more formidable than that of the Old Pretender, a rising which would
put for a moment in serious peril the Hanoverian hold of the throne.
But they might well have been acc