and say, Ah! our nation has been reduced to the last extremity, at the time of this treaty; all our great chieftains, all our great peers and considerable men, who used formerly to defend the rights and liberties of the nation, have been all killed and dead in the bed of honor, before ever the nation was necessitated to condescend to such mean and contemptible terms.  Where are the names of the chief men, of the noble families of Stuarts, Hamiltons, Grahams, Campbels, Gordons, Johnstons, Humes, Murrays, Kers?  Where are the two great officers of the crown, the constables and marshals of Scotland?  They have certainly all been extinguished, and now we are slaves forever.

Whereas the English records will make their posterity reverence the memory of the honorable names who have brought under their fierce, warlike, and troublesome neighbors, who had struggled so long for independence, shed the best blood of their nation and reduced a considerable part of their country to become waste and desolate.

I am informed, my lord, that our commissioners did indeed frankly tell the lords commissioners for England that the inclinations of the people of Scotland were much altered of late, in relation to an incorporating union; and that, therefore, since the entail was to end with her Majesty’s life (whom God long preserve), it was proper to begin the treaty upon the foot of the treaty of 1604, year of God, the time when we came first under one sovereign; but this the English commissioners would not agree to, and our commissioners, that they might not seem obstinate, were willing to treat and conclude in the terms laid before this honorable house and subjected to their determination.  If the lords commissioners for England had been as civil and complaisant, they should certainly have finished a federal treaty likewise, that both nations might have the choice which of them to have gone into as they thought fit; but they would hear of nothing but an entire and complete union, a name which comprehends a union, either by incorporation, surrender, or conquest, whereas our commissioners thought of nothing but a fair, equal, incorporating union.  Whether this be so or not I leave it to every man’s judgment; but as for myself I must beg liberty to think it no such thing; for I take an incorporating union to be, where there is a change both in the material and formal points of government, as if two pieces of metal were melted down into one mass, it can neither be said to retain its former form or substance as it did before the mixture.  But now, when I consider this treaty, as it hath been explained and spoke to before us this three weeks by past, I see the English constitution remaining firm, the same two houses of Parliament, the same taxes, the same customs, the same excises, the same trading companies, the same municipal laws and courts of judicature; and all ours either subject to regulations or annihilations, only we have the honor to pay their old debts and to have some few persons present for witnesses to the validity of the deed when they are pleased to contract more.