Five questions were submitted to them: the preserving entire to both kingdoms of their laws, civil and ecclesiastical; the uniting of the two kingdoms into one monarchy; the reducing of both parliaments to one; the regulation of trade; and the best means of preserving the conditions of the Union.
The subject of trade, the most important of all, was never reached; for, before very long, the treaty broke down on the question of the representation of Scotland in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Scottish commissioners proposed that all the members of the Scottish Estates should be members of the Parliament. To this the English commissioners could not agree; and the proceedings came to an abrupt conclusion.
During these negotiations the Scotsmen had not been on very good terms with each other. Lauderdale and Tweeddale quarrelled; and Sir George Mackenzie says that the Lord Chancellor, at dinner one day, abused two of the commissioners, Sir Archibald Primrose, father of the first Earl of Rosebery, and Sir John Nisbet, then Lord Advocate, for walking on foot when they had a handsome allowance for expenses, and called them “damned lawyers.” They were heard to express their resentment at this; whereupon Lauderdale, who bore them a grudge as supporters of Tweeddale, told them he would accuse them to the king of trying to frustrate the Union by causing bad feeling among the commissioners. “And thus,” says Mackenzie, “in place of uniting the nations, these wise commissioners disunited themselves, and returned to Scotland as men from a rout.”
However popular an Union might have been among the Scottish merchants, it would have been most unpopular in England. The English merchants, who had exulted in the failure of the Commission on Trade, were up in arms against the idea of giving to Scotland the privileges which she would have secured by the Union; and the majority of Englishmen still hated and despised the very name of Scotland. This hatred and contempt of the neighbour country, an inheritance from the long years of international warfare, found vent in abusive descriptions of Scotland and the Scottish people, which were circulated all over the island, causing laughter in England and rousing bitter indignation beyond the Tweed. “The country,” says one writer, “is full of lakes and loughs, and they are well stocked with islands; so that a map thereof looks like a pillory coat bespattered all over with dirt and rotten eggs, some pieces of the shells floating here and there representing the islands.” The towns of Scotland were briefly described as poor and populous, especially Edinburgh, which resembled its inhabitants in “being high and dirty.” It was compared to a double comb, an article which Scotsmen did not often use, having one great street, with a number of alleys branching from it, which might be mistaken for common sewers.