+Source.+--_Memoirs of the Life of Sir John Clerk of Penicuik,
Baronet, Baron of the Exchequer: extracted by himself from his own
Journals, 1676-1755_, p. 55. (Edinburgh: Scottish Historical
Society, 1892.)
We of the Committee of Parliament for the publick accompts continued our
applications to the matters remitted to us till the Parliament met in
September 1705. John, Duke of Argyle, a youth of about 23 years of age,
was appointed her Majesty's High Commissioner, and in this station
behaved himself in a manner far above what cou'd be expected from one of
his years.... A ... great benefit I received by my intimacy with the
Duke and his brother was to be recommended to the Queen for one of the
Commissioners to be appointed by Her Majesty for the Treaty of Union
between England and Scotland.... This choise, however honourable to me,
was very far from giving me the least pleasure or satisfaction, for I
had observed a great backwardness in the Parliament of Scotland for an
Union with England of any kind whatsoever, and therefore doubted not
but, after a great deal of expense in attending a Treaty in England, I
should be oblidged to return with the uneasy reflexion of having either
done nothing, or nothing to the purpose, as had been the case of former
Commissioners appointed for this end. I was, in short, upon the point of
refusing the Honour conferred upon me, and the rather that my Father,
whom I always considered as an Oracle seldom mistaken, seemed not to
approve of it. However, as at last he grew passive, and that the Duke of
Queensberry threatened to withdraw all friendship for me, I suffered my
self to be prevailed upon, and to take journey for London with other
Commissioners, and arrived there on the 13 of Aprile 1706.
... The Commissioners of both nations met in different apartments in the
Royal palace of Westminster, which commonly goes under the name of the
Cockpit. There was one great Room where they all met when they were
called upon to attend the Queen, or were to exchange papers, but they
never met to hold conferences together except once, when the number of
the Scotch Representatives for the two Houses of the British Parliament
came to be debated, all their transactions were reduced in writings
concerted in seperat apartments. When proposals or Conditions of the
Union were to be made by the English Commissioners, the Scots were
desired to meet them in the great Room, and their proposals were given
in by the L^d Chancellor, or the Keeper of the great seal, who was at
that time the Lord Cooper, and when the Commissioners for Scotland had
any thing to propose, or had answers to be made to the Commissioners of
England, these were presented by the L^d Seafield, then Chancellor for
Scotland....
The first grand point debated by the Commissioners for Scotland amongst
themselves was whether they should propose to the English a Federal
union between the two nations, or an Incorporating union. The first was
most favoured by the people of Scotland, but all the Scots
Commissioners, to a Man, considered it ridiculous and impracticable, for
that in all the Federal unions there behoved to be a supreme power
lodged somewhere, and wherever this was lodged it henceforth became the
States General, or, in our way of speaking, the Parliament of Great
Britain, under the same royal power and authority as the two nations are
at present. And in things of the greatest consequence to the two
nations, as in Councils relating to peace and war and subsidies, it was
impossible that the Representatives or their suffrages in both nations
cou'd be equal, but must be regulated in proportion to the power and
riches of the several publick burdens or Taxations that cou'd affect
them; in a word, the Scots Commissioners saw that no Union cou'd subsist
between the two nations but an incorporating perpetual one. But after
all the trouble we gave ourselves to please the people of Scotland, we
knew at the time that it was but losing our labour, for the English
Commissioners were positively resolved to treat on no kind of union with
us but what was to be incorporating and perpetual....
The Queen came among us three several times, once at our first or
second meeting, to acquaint us of her intentions and ardent good wishes
for our success and unanimity in this great Transaction. At about a
month thereafter she came again to enquire of our success, and had most
of our Minutes read to her, and for the last time of what we had
done....
I was ... intrusted with another province by the Commissioners for
Scotland, which was to review the Calculations made for the Equivalent
to be paid to Scotland for bearing their share of the Debt of England,
which were afterwards to be considered as the Debts of Great Britain.
These calculations were chiefly made by Doctor Gregory, professor of
Mathematicks in the College of Oxford, and a certain great accomptant
and projector, one Patersone,[26] from Scotland, but bred in England
from his infancy....
One day I had occasion to observe the Calamities which attend human
nature even in the greatest dignities of Life. Her majesty was labouring
under a fit of the Gout, and in extream pain and agony, and on this
occasion every thing about her was much in the same disorder as about
the meanest of her subjects. Her face, which was red and spotted, was
rendered something frightful by her negligent dress, and the foot
affected was tied up with a pultis and some nasty bandages. I was much
affected at this sight, and the more _when she had occasion to mention
her people of Scotland_, which she did frequently to the Duke. What are
you, poor meanlike Mortal, thought I, who talks in the style of a
Soveraign? Nature seems to be inverted when a poor infirm Woman becomes
one of the Rulers of the World, but, as Tacitus observes, it is not the
first time that Women have governed in Britain, and indeed they have
sometimes done this to better purpose than the Men.
But to return to the Treaty of Union, the Articles were at last agreed
to, sign'd, and sealed, by all the Commissioners, the 22 of July 1706.
They were afterwards presented to the Queen at her palace of S^t James,
before a very numerous Assembley.