d resisted Edward were to
keep their estates on payment of fines, the Scottish law was to be
observed, and Scots were to be chosen to represent the wishes of their
fellow-countrymen in the Parliament at Westminster. On the other hand,
the Scottish nobles were to surrender their castles, and the country
was to be governed by an English Lieutenant, who, together with his
council, had power to amend the laws.

18. =Character of Edward's Dealings with Scotland.=--Edward's
dealings with Scotland, mistaken as they were, were not those of a
self-willed tyrant. If it be once admitted that he was really the lord
paramount of Scotland, everything that he did may be justified upon
feudal principles. First, Balliol forfeited his vassal crown by
breaking his obligations as a vassal. Secondly, Edward, through the
default of his vassal, took possession of the fief which Balliol had
forfeited, and thus became the immediate lord of Balliol's vassals.
Thirdly, those vassals rebelled--so at least Edward would have
said--against their new lord. Fourthly, they thereby forfeited their
estates to him, and he was therefore, according to his own view, in
the right in restoring their estates to them--if he restored them at
all--under new conditions. Satisfactory as this argument must have
seemed to Edward, it was weak in two places. The Scots might attack it
at its basis by retorting that Edward had never truly been lord
paramount of Scotland at all; or they might assert that it did not
matter whether he was so or not, because the Scottish right to
national independence was superior to all feudal claims. It is this
latter argument which has the most weight at the present day, and it
seems to us strange that Edward, who had done so much to encourage the
national growth of England, should have entirely ignored the national
growth of Scotland. All that can be said to palliate Edward's mistake
is that it was, at first, difficult to perceive that there was a
Scottish nationality at all. Changes in the political aspect of
affairs grow up unobserved, and it was not till after his death that
all classes in Scotland were completely welded together in resistance
to an English king. At all events, if he treated the claim of the
Scots to national independence with contempt, he at least strove,
according to his own notions, to benefit Scots and English alike. He
hoped that one nation, justly ruled under one government, would grow
up in the place of two divi