Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/612

 604 REVIEWS OF BOOKS October houses of convocation ; and it suggests speculations, which the present is not the place to pursue, as to its bearing upon future developments in the history of chambers established and disestablished, coexistent or reunited. In Part II, The Passing of the Act of Union, we find, besides a useful summary of earlier efiorts towards the union of the crowns, a glance (for it is not very much more) at the interest of protestantism in promoting the mion notwithstanding the dangers by which, from the presbyterian point of view, it could not but be attended. There is a ' comment ' on the pressing need of Scotland for material prosperity (free trade), in which is to be found the final cause of the decision which in the critical years, 1703-5 — the years here described as those of the war between the parliaments — decided the issue. A century had taught the lesson that the existing union of 1603 had not brought material prosperity to Scotland, and had intensified in its general course, as well as by particular incidents, the strength of nationalism which Scott (afterwards the opponent of the union in an episode recalling — after a fashion — Swift and Wood's halfpence) was to depict with so irresistible a touch. It is in this part of their essay that Mr, Dicey and his coadjutor — familiar as they are with every detail of Scottish as well as English constitutional history — without adding any- thing that can be described as new, prove the most trustworthy of guides through the complications of their subject. If we refer to two points only, it is because one of them has not unfrequently been overlooked, while the other remains in a certain measure imsettled. The one is the fact (it might almost be called a ' thought ') that, at the drafting, in England, of the treaty on which the act of union was based, the English commissioners at once informed the Scottish that ' any proposed union must be an incorporation of the two kingdoms into a unitary and not a federal state, even though Scotsmen expressed a preference for some kind of federative union '. Hence the consequence that no definite scheme of federation was ever put forward by the adversaries of the act of union, or, at a time when it would be difficult to exaggerate its unpopularity in Scotland, insisted on as supported by the Scottish people. The other point may seem one of detail. On the question whether the commissioners inten- tionally left open the difficulty concerning the appellate jurisdiction of the house of lords, our authors are not altogether content with the hesitating reply that the inquiry was a dangerous one and might not have arisen for years. It did arise, in the Greenshields case so early as 1709, and in an extremely dangerous form, as challenging a decision which would or would not acquire or preserve toleration for episcopalian worship in Scotland. They have accordingly come to the conclusion that the Scottish com- missioners told their English colleagues that an appeal from the court of session to the Scottish parliament existed under the law of Scotland ; and that the commission, as a body, were therefore prepared to give to the house of lords a jurisdiction already possessed by the Scottish parlia- ment. While it is impossible not to agree cordially with Mr. Dicey and Professor Rait in the view, against which Sir Walter Scott could not shut his eyes, that the allowance of the appeal in question has worked most beneficially, attention should in justice be directed to the care with which a very delicate as well as difficult historical problem is here discussed.