SCOTLAND. CXXX1X 



In this discourse, his knowledge of the miseries of Ire 

 land, that still neglected country, and of the mode of pre 

 venting them, with his heartfelt anxiety for her welfare, 

 appears in all his ardent endeavours, by all the power he 

 possessed, to insure the King s exertions for &quot; this desolate 

 and neglected country, blessed with almost all the dowries 

 of nature, with rivers, havens, woods, quarries, good soil, 

 temperate climate, and a race and generation of men, 

 valiant, hard, and active, as it is not easy to find such 

 confluence of commodities, if the hand of man did join 

 with the hand of nature ; but they are severed, the harp 

 of Ireland is not strung or attuned to concord. This work, 

 therefore, of all other, most memorable and honourable, 

 your majesty hath now in hand; specially, if your majesty 

 join the harp of David in casting out the evil spirit of 

 superstition, with the harp of Orpheus, in casting out deso 

 lation and barbarism. &quot;() 



His exertions respecting the union of England and Scot- Scotland, 

 land were, both in and out of parliament, strenuous and 

 unremitted. He spoke whenever the subject was agitated. 

 He was a member of every committee that was formed to 

 carry it into effect : he prepared the certificate of the com 

 missioners appointed to treat of the union : and he was 

 selected to report the result of a conference with the Lords; 

 until, exhausted by fatigue, he was compelled to intercede 

 with the house that he might be assisted by the co-opera 

 tion of other members in the discharge of these arduous 

 duties; (6) and, it having been decided by all the judges, 

 after an able argument of Bacon s, that all persons born in 

 Scotland after the King s commission were natural born 

 subjects, he laboured in parliament to extend these privi- 



() Speech on General Naturalization. 

 (b) Commons Journals. 



