and Kingdom of Scotland,
the true Foundation of a Compleat Union reasserted_ (1704), was
burnt as "scurrilous and full of falsehoods," whilst a liberal
reward was voted to Hodges and Anderson, who by their pens had
advocated the independence of the Scotch crown. Ten years later
Attwood contributed another work to the flames, called _The
Scotch Patriot Unmasked_ (1715). Attwood was a barrister by
profession, a controversialist in practice, writing against the
theories of Filmer and the Tories. He had a great knowledge of
old charters, and wrote an able but inconclusive answer to
Molyneux' _Case for Ireland_. He last appears as Chief Justice in
New York, where he became involved in debt and died.

In 1706 two works were condemned to the Mercat Cross: (1) _An
Account of the Burning of the Articles of Union at Dumfries_; (2)
_Queries to the Presbyterian Noblemen, Barons, Burgesses,
Ministers, and Commissioners in Scotland who are for the Scheme
of an Incorporating Union with England_.

Hutchinson's _Commercial Restraints of Ireland_, published in
1779, and reviewing the progress of English misgovernment, proved
the correctness of Molyneux' prognostications nearly a century
before. "Can the history of any fruitful country on the globe,"
he asked (and the question may be asked still), "enjoying peace
for fourscore years, and not visited by plague or pestilence,
produce so many recorded instances of the poverty and
wretchedness and of the reiterated want and misery of the lower
orders of the people? There is no such example in ancient or
modern history."

That a book of such sentiments should have been burnt, as easier
so to deal with than to answer, would accord well enough with
antecedent probability; but, inasmuch as there is no such record
in the Commons' _Journals_, the probability must remain that
Captain Valentine Blake, M.P. for Galway, who, in a letter to the
_Times_ of February 14th, 1846, appears to have been the first to
assert the fact, erroneously identified the fate of Hutchinson's
anonymous work with the then received version of the fate of the
work of Molyneux. The rarity of the first edition of the
_Commercial Restraints_ may well enough accord with other methods
of suppression than burning.

_The Present Crisis_, therefore, of 1775, must retain the
distinction of having been the last book to be condemned to the
public fire; and with it a practice which can appeal for its
descent to classical Greece