ustry and to the physical
wellbeing of the Scottish people. Hating him and cursing him, they could
not help thriving under him, and often, during the administration of
their legitimate princes, looked back with regret to the golden days of
the usurper, [273]

The Restoration came, and changed every thing. The Scots regained
their independence, and soon began to find that independence had its
discomfort as well as its dignity. The English parliament treated them
as aliens and as rivals. A new Navigation Act put them on almost the
same footing with the Dutch. High duties, and in some cases prohibitory
duties, were imposed on the products of Scottish industry. It is not
wonderful that a nation eminently industrious, shrewd, and enterprising,
a nation which, having been long kept back by a sterile soil and
a severe climate, was just beginning to prosper in spite of these
disadvantages, and which found its progress suddenly stopped, should
think itself cruelly treated. Yet there was no help. Complaint was vain.
Retaliation was impossible. The Sovereign, even if he had the wish, had
not the power, to bear himself evenly between his large and his small
kingdom, between the kingdom from which he drew an annual revenue of a
million and a half and the kingdom from which he drew an annual revenue
of little more than sixty thousand pounds. He dared neither to refuse
his assent to any English law injurious to the trade of Scotland, nor to
give his assent to any Scotch law injurious to the trade of England.

The complaints of the Scotch, however, were so loud that Charles, in
1667, appointed Commissioners to arrange the terms of a commercial
treaty between the two British kingdoms. The conferences were soon
broken off; and all that passed while they continued proved that
there was only one way in which Scotland could obtain a share of the
commercial prosperity which England at that time enjoyed, [274] The
Scotch must become one people with the English. The Parliament which
had hitherto sate at Edinburgh must be incorporated with the Parliament
which sate at Westminster. The sacrifice could not but be painfully
felt by a brave and haughty people, who had, during twelve generations,
regarded the southern domination with deadly aversion, and whose hearts
still swelled at the thought of the death of Wallace and of the triumphs
of Bruce. There were doubtless many punctilious patriots who would have
strenuously opposed an union even if th