This levelling system, not equitable in itself, is infinitely unjust, if a story, often told by my poor old grandfather, was true, which I own I am inclined to doubt.  The old man, sir, had learned in his youth, or dreamed in his dotage, that Scotland had become an integral part of England,—­not in right of conquest, or rendition, or through any right of inheritance—­but in virtue of a solemn Treaty of Union.  Nay, so distinct an idea had he of this supposed Treaty, that he used to recite one of its articles to this effect:—­’That the laws in use within the kingdom of Scotland, do, after the Union, remain in the same force as before, but alterable by the Parliament of Great Britain, with this difference between the laws concerning public right, policy, and civil government, and those which concern private right, that the former may be made the same through the whole United Kingdom; but that no alteration be made on laws which concern private right, excepting for the evident utility of the subjects within Scotland.’  When the old gentleman came to the passage, which you will mark in italics, he always clenched his fist, and exclaimed, ’Nemo me impune lacessit!’ which, I presume, are words belonging to the black art, since there is no one in the Modern Athens conjuror enough to understand their meaning, or at least to comprehend the spirit of the sentiment which my grandfather thought they conveyed.

I cannot help thinking, sir, that if there had been any truth in my grandfather’s story, some Scottish member would, on the late occasion, have informed the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that, in virtue of this Treaty, it was no sufficient reason for innovating upon the private rights of Scotsmen in a most tender and delicate point, merely that the Right Honourable Gentleman saw no reason why the same law should not be current through the whole of his Majesty’s dominions; and that, on the contrary, it was incumbent upon him to go a step further, and to show that the alteration proposed was for the EVIDENT UTILITY of the subjects within Scotland,—­a proposition disavowed by the Right Honourable Gentleman’s candid admission, as well as by that of the Prime Minister, and contradicted in every circumstance by the actual state of the case.

Methinks, sir, our ‘Chosen Five and Forty,’ supposing they had bound themselves to Ministers by such oaths of silence and obedience as are taken by Carthusian friars, must have had free-will and speech to express their sentiments, had they been possessed of so irrefragable an argument in such a case of extremity.  The sight of a father’s life in danger is said to have restored the power of language to the dumb; and truly, the necessary defence of the rights of our native country is not, or at least ought not to be, a less animating motive.  Lord Lauderdale almost alone interfered, and procured, to his infinite honour, a delay of six months in the extension of this act,—­a sort of reprieve from the southern jougs,—­by which we may have some chance of profiting, if, during the interval, we can show ourselves true Scotsmen, by some better proof than merely by being ’wise behind the hand.’