104 THE UNION oF 1707 IN DUMFRIESSHIRE. 
of the foresaid Union may pass in Parliament contrar to our 
fundamental laws, liberties, and privileges, concerning Church 
and State, may not be binding upon the nation, now or at any 
time to come ; and particularly we protest against the approbation 
of the first Article of the said Union, before the privileges of this 
nation, contain’d in the other Articles had been adjusted and 
secured ; and so we earnestly require that the representatives in 
Parliament, who are for our nation’s privileges, would give 
timeous warning to all the corners of the Kingdom; that we and 
our posterity become not tributary and bond slaves to our neigh- 
bours without acquiting our selves as becomes men and 
Christians ; and we are confident that the soldiers now in martial 
power have so much of the spirits of Scots-men; that they are 
not ambitious to be disposed of at the pleasure of another nation ; 
and we hereby declare that we have no design against them in 
this matter.’’ There is an endorsation at the foot of the docu- 
ment that it was “ publickly read from the Mercat Cross of Dum- 
fries about one of the clock in the afternoon, the 20th day of 
November, 1706, with great solemnity, in the audience of many 
thousands ; the fire being surrounded with double squadrons of 
Foot and Horse in Martial order: And after the Burning of the 
said Books (which were holden up Burning on the point of a 
Pike, to the view of all the People, giving their consent by 
Huzza’s and Chearful acclamations). A Coppy hereof has left 
affixed on the Cross, as a Testimony of the South part of this 
Nation against the Proposed Union, as Moulded in the Printed 
Articles thereof. This we desire to be printed and kept in 
Record ad futuram rei memoriam.’’ The endorsement is quite 
illegible in the print of the “ Account ’’ preserved in Dumfries 
Observatory, which is much torn at the foot, but there is a com- 
plete copy in the Advocates’ Library, from which I have ascer- 
tained its terms. The intention seems to have been to impress 
Parliament with the importance of the disturbance in question, 
even at the expense of strict accuracy of detail, because in De 
Foe’s History of the Union, published in 1709, the author (who, 
writing so soon after the event, must have been able to obtain 
fairly exact information) states that the numbers actually present 
were about 200, and he adds “that there was any such thing as 
squadrons or companies, either of horse or foot, or any 
martial order, such as officers or commanders, or any- 
