an the Union. If I thought myself obliged in duty to
the public interest to use my utmost endeavour to quiet the minds of
enraged parties, I found myself under a stronger necessity to embark in
the same design between two most enraged nations."

The union of the two kingdoms had become an object of pressing and
paramount importance towards the close of William's reign. He had found
little difficulty in getting the English Parliament to agree to settle
the succession of the House of Hanover, but the proposal that the
succession to the throne of Scotland should be settled on the same head
was coldly received by the Scottish Parliament. It was not so much that
the politicians of Edinburgh were averse to a common settlement, or
positively eager for a King and Court of their own, but they were
resolved to hold back till they were assured of commercial privileges
which would go to compensate them for the drain of wealth that was
supposed to have followed the King southwards. This was the policy of
the wiser heads, not to accept the Union without as advantageous terms
as they could secure. They had lost an opportunity at the Revolution,
and were determined not to lose another. But among the mass of the
population the feeling was all in favour of a separate kingdom. National
animosity had been inflamed to a passionate pitch by the Darien disaster
and the Massacre of Glencoe. The people listened readily to the
insinuations of hot-headed men that the English wished to have
everything their own way. The counter-charge about the Scotch found
equally willing hearers among the mass in England. Never had cool-headed
statesmen a harder task in preventing two nations from coming to blows.
All the time that the Treaty of Union was being negotiated which King
William had earnestly urged from his deathbed, throughout the first half
of Queen Anne's reign they worked under a continual apprehension lest
the negotiations should end in a violent and irreconcilable rupture.

Defoe might well say that he was pursuing the same blessed subject of
Peace in trying to reconcile these two most enraged nations, and writing
with all his might for the Union. An Act enabling the Queen to appoint
Commissioners on the English side to arrange the terms of the Treaty had
been passed in the first year of her reign, but difficulties had arisen
about the appointment of the Scottish Commissioners, and it was not till
the Spring of 1706 that the two Commissions cam