nce, with which country
England was now at war. In the summer of 1703 the Scots passed an Act of
Security, which invested the Parliament with the power of the crown in
case of the queen's dying without heirs, and entrusted to it the choice
of a Protestant sovereign "from the royal line". It refused to such king
or queen, if also sovereign of England, the power of declaring war or
making peace without the consent of Parliament, and it enacted that the
union of the crowns should determine after the queen's death unless
Scotland was admitted to equal trade and navigation privileges with
England. Further, the act provided for the compulsory training of every
Scotsman to bear arms, in order that the country might, if necessary,
defend its independence by the sword. The queen's consent to the Act of
Security was refused, and the bitterness of the national feeling was
accentuated by the suspicion of a Jacobite plot. Parliament had been
adjourned on 16th September, 1703. When it met in 1704 it again passed
the Act of Security, and an important section began to argue that the
royal assent was merely a usual form, and not an indispensable
authentication of an act. For some time, it seemed as if the two
countries were on the brink of war. But, as the union of the crowns had
been rendered possible by the self-restraint of a nation who could
accept their hereditary enemy as their hereditary sovereign, so now
Queen Anne's advisers resolved, with patient wisdom, to secure, at all
hazards, the union of the kingdoms.

It was not an easy task, even in England, for there could be no union
without complete freedom of trade, and many Englishmen were most
unwilling to yield on this point. In Scotland the difficulties to be
overcome were much greater. The whole nation, irrespective of politics
and religion, felt bitterly the indignity of surrendering the
independent existence for which Scotland had fought for four hundred
years. It could not but be difficult to reconcile an ancient and
high-spirited people to incorporation with a larger and more powerful
neighbour, and the whole population mourned the approaching loss of
their Parliament and their autonomy. Almost every section had special
reasons for opposing the measure. For the Jacobites an Act of Union
meant that Scotland was irretrievably committed to the Hanoverian
succession, and whatever force the Jacobites might be able to raise
after the queen's death must take action in the shape o