Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/323

 THE EAST AND THE NORTH 311 overthrown. But parliament had secured the succession of the house of Hanover after her death ; and when King George ascended the throne in 17 14, the supremacy of parliament and party government was immediately established. One other event of vital importance took place during Anne's reign. This was the incorporation by treaty of England and Scotland as a single kingdom with one legislature The Union, and one crown ; for hitherto there had been nothing 1707 - to prevent either kingdom from changing the line of succession to its own throne. Also the incorporation, by removing com- mercial distinctions between the two countries, hitherto a grave impediment to Scottish industries and commerce, sowed the seed of Scotland's financial prosperity in the future, though nearly half a century elapsed before the result was fully realised. Henceforth, instead of the kingdoms of England and Scotland there is a single power, that of Great Britain. The accession of the house of Hanover definitely established the principle that there is no unalterable law of succession in England. Its course was fixed by an act of parlia- T - ment sanctioned by the Crown which precluded any Hanoverian Roman Catholic from sitting on the throne. This Succession. settled the succession on Sophia, the grand-daughter of James I. and daughter of the Elector Palatine, whose Catholic descend- ants were barred equally with the exiled Stuarts. Her husband, the Duke of Hanover, had been made a ninth Elector of the empire ; whence she is known as the Electress Sophia. Hence it was actually her son George, the Elector of Hanover, who succeeded to the English throne on the death of Queen Anne. For a little more than thirty years longer the claims of the exiled Stuarts of the English throne served not only to compli- cate English politics, but also as a not very power- „ . . Jacobitisin. ful weapon in the hands of her enemies abroad. Ministers in England could never feel quite free from the fear of a possible restoration ; while on the other hand the Han- overian kings knew that they were in England only on sufferance, and could never set themselves in opposition to the will of parliament. By this means that constitutional government