54 Transactions. 



3. Scotland in the 18th Century. By Mr Peter Gray, 

 Edinburgh. 



In previous papers we have had glimpses of the material con- 

 dition of the Scottish people, and somewhat of their moral and 

 social state from the 13th to the 18th century, gathered from the 

 narratives of strangers who had visited the country during that 

 long interval, and left records of their visits. The history of Scot- 

 land between those dates naturally arranges itself in two well- 

 marked periods. From the death of the Maid of Norway, in 

 1290, to the accession of Mary Stewart, the Scottish nation was 

 involved in an almost continuous struggle for existence, sorely 

 trying, but not without dignity, and with a beneficial effect upon 

 the character of the people. The period, however, between the 

 accession of Mary's son, James, to the English throne and 

 that of another Mary Stewart was fully as harassing, 

 but infinitely more demoralizing — aptly described by 

 Principal Shairp as a century of turbulence and disorder, 

 when Superintendency, Tulchan Bishops, Melville Pres- 

 bytery, Spottiswood Episcopacy, the Covenant, Eestored 

 Episcopacy, and Moderate or Non-Covenanting Presbytery 

 were jostling each other ; when the whole kingdom was 

 full of quarrelling, fighting, plotting, convulsions, reactions, and 

 counter-revolutions. Amid all this turmoil there was in certain 

 directions considerable moral improvement ; but the material 

 condition of the country scarcely advanced beyond that of the 

 Middle Ages, if it did not in some respects retrograde. The 

 flight of James II., and the election of the Prince of Qrange and 

 his consort to the vacant throne, however, brought some degree 

 of peace and confidence to the sorely tried land. But the old 

 international hatred between kindred peoples required time to 

 allay, and two rebellions fully opened the eyes of the English 

 Government to the necessity of conciliation. After the Legis- 

 lative Union, compensation was made to the sufferers by the 

 collapse of the Darien scheme, ruined by the intrigues of the 

 English Government and the English mercantile classes, the 

 heritable jurisdictions which had often been the instrument of 

 great oppression and extortion were subsequently abolished, also 

 with compensation to the holders ; while the money that came 

 into the country from these sources and the opening of the 



