Talk:Acts of Union 1707

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Contents

[edit] Amending the Act

I'm not a lawyer, but I think this statement in the article is misleading: The treaty provided that if any 'laws and statutes' were 'contrary to or inconsistent with the terms' of the Treaty; that they would be null and void. In practice this has been ignored, and the Parliament of the United Kingdom has been allowed to amend the Act.

The original act has: That all Laws and Statutes in either Kingdom so far as they are contrary to, or inconsistent with the Terms of these Articles, or any of them, shall from and after the Union cease and become void, and shall be so declared to be by the respective Parliaments of the said Kingdoms.

This seems to imply that all laws currently in force at the time that violate the treaty are rendered null and void, but doesn't say that the act can't ever be amended in the future. Parliament had always had the power to overturn or modify any act of a previous Parliament. --JW1805 6 July 2005 17:33 (UTC)


I think you're trying to apply English concepts, such as the sovereignty of Parliament, to the Scottish and UK-wide situation. If you read the judgement in MacCormick v. Lord Advocate then you'll see quite clearly that this concept does not apply in Scotland and while the Act of Union can be amended, there are certain 'entrenched' principles that cannot be altered. The words 'from or after the Union' seem to imply that the Act is referring to both previous enactments and future enactments.

—————————————————————

A fundamental concept in the UK Parliament is that no government can bind a future government. The government that passed the Act of Union cannot prevent any future government from amending the Act. --wonko 09:09, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I have the Chronological Table of the Statutes open in front of me just now, and it notes the Scottish act (which, interestingly, it lists as c.7 of 1706 - old style dates, I guess) is repealed in part by the Statute Law Revision (Scotland) Act (1906); the Criminal Justice Act 1948 s.83 (3) sch. 10, Pt. III; the Peerage Act 1963 s.7 (2) sch.2; & the Statute Law Revision (Scotland) Act 1964.
The English act - these are listed seperately, since they were before 1707 - is more detailed, and states that the following parts have been repealed - articles 5, 6 (in part), 7 (in part), 8, 9, 10-15, 16 (in part), 17, 19 (in part), 22 (in part). The Peerage Act of 1963 repeals bits but it doesn't specify which ones, and sections 2, 3, 4 and 6 have all been repealed in part. Article 23 and section 2 have been amended. The Scots and English ones were amended by seperate laws, which makes sense, but I do wonder if they're out of synch by now...
Anyway, this clarifies a lot of matters in the "violated" part; arts. 8 and 12 & 13 are certainly obsolete and can't be violated. 16 may still be in force; I don't know what was changed. 21 (the Royal Burghs) is still an open question. Shimgray | talk | 09:49, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
...our Wikisource article doesn't have "sections". This is... a little confusing, since the book says there were some. Any ideas? Shimgray | talk | 09:54, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge

JW1805 is trying to pretend that he is the second person to support a merger. He knows fine well that I did not put up the Merge notice because I support such a merger, but rather because I strongly objected to him unilaterally deleting the Treaty of Union article. There used to be a very good Treaty of Union article (a couple of years ago?), but someone has completely erased it from the records. Certain people are trying to blackwash the Treaty out of history.--Mais oui! 07:51, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
  • I didn't mean to imply anything. However, there never was a Treaty of Union article. Last month, someone actually moved the Act of Union 1707 article to Treaty of Union 1707, and then went around various other articles replacing "Act" with "Treaty" (actually, I think you may have been involved with that, but I could be mistaken). The fact is that the Treaty of Union did not merge the two kingdoms. That was accomplished by the Acts. The brief mention of the "Treaty of Union" would be better located in the "Act of Union" article, that way everything would be in the same place. --JW1805 15:11, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

I am very confused. What was the old situation? What is the current situation? What are the new situations being proposed? Doops | talk 00:00, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Vote on Merge

Pease visit Talk:Treaty of Union 1707 and vote for what the name of this article should be. --JW1805 21:32, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

  • Talk:Act of Union 1707 — Act of Union 1707 → Acts of Union 1707 – The article discusses the two Acts of Parliament (one by the English Parliament, one by the Scots Parliament) passed to create the Union of Scotland and England - indeed the article itself uses the term 'Acts of Union' (PLURAL) therefore it seems logical for the article title to be plural Cynical 11:16, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
Do we get to be bribed and threatened as the 1707 votes in Scotland were? --MacRusgail 11:40, 23 January 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Voting

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your vote with ~~~~
  • Support per above Cynical 11:24, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose The article is attempting to be absolutely clear, but usage (even in Sir Walter) is Act of Union. For comparison, the Act of Union 1800 was also done by two parliaments, with even more bribes (but maybe fewer threats). Septentrionalis 01:38, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
That's because Sir Walter was only interested in the Scottish Act, not the English one Cynical 17:02, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose It was a single Act. It just happend to be passed by two parliaments. --JW1805 (Talk) 02:41, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Support Also, should it not be mentioned somewhere that the Scottish Act was called the Union with England Act 1707, and that the English Act was called the Union with Scotland Act 1706 (see List of Acts of Parliament of the Scottish Parliament and List of Acts of Parliament of the English Parliament), and that they were actually passed in different years? In fact the English Parliament even managed to pass four more pieces of legislation before being abolished. "It was a single act" strikes me as being innaccurate: was the wording in each exactly the same? Given that the titles themselves of the Acts vary, this seems highly unlikely.--Mais oui! 16:19, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Passage by the English Parliament should be discuessed in much more detail. But it's clear from the article that the two happened in the same session, within weeks of each other. New Year's Day just happened to be in between.Septentrionalis 23:10, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
      • Passage by the English Parliament should be discussed in much more detail ? Passage in the English parliament was pretty straightforward. The big events happened in the Scottish Parliament where opposition was considerable. For this Union Scotland was where the action was. -- Derek Ross | Talk 16:00, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Support -- weakly. It's a pretty trivial move. The content of the article is far more important than this minor title change. -- Derek Ross | Talk 16:00, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Support per Derek Ross. I think it was two acts passed by two different parliaments, only that the two acts had identical text (if that makes any sense).--MacRusgail 21:13, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

Add any additional comments

[edit] Preceding move

Since the move proposed seems to have been effected, the preceding section should have that archive "do not alter" box thingy. BTW, why has Act of Union 1800 not had the same treatment? As regards the "different years" thing, New Year's Day was on Lady Day back then. jnestorius(talk) 01:03, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Formation of the United Kingdom"

As usual such timelines work from an Anglocentric perspective... if the Treaty of Rhuddlan can be mentioned, surely the annexation of Orkney and Shetland should figure too in the Scottish context.--MacRusgail 20:44, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Interesting point but (if you'll forgive a little more anglocentricism) by extension wouldn't that also require the formation of England from the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and the similar process in Wales (or to take it to an extreme dicussions on Berwick Upon Tweed). The current timeline at least is considtent in limiting itself to the building blocks of what are regognised as the "nations" (whatever that menasn...) of the Union. Epeeist smudge 14:00, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
Well, I think these were building blocks of the nation of Scotland. The annexation of Orkney and Shetland took place long after Rhuddlan, and some of their laws still remain. --MacRusgail 19:44, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
I agree with MacRusgail. Either all the pre 1707 treaties/expansions involving Scotland and England should be shown or none at all - the UK traces tis origins to the union of the only two independent states in the British Isles which were the Kingdom of Scotland and the Kingdom of England. English annexation of Wales is certainly significant for both of those territories but the UK was formed by two powers ; England ( which contained Wales and had Ireland as a vassal state/colony) and Scotland. siarach 13:43, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
Ive removed the earlier Anglo-Welsh treaties from the template for the reasons above. The template now starts with the Union of Crowns of 1603 which is the earliest reasonable point where one can point to the beginnings of a united kingdom in the British isles. siarach 13:56, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
Also, Ive created a seperate template which contains the Anglo-Welsh treaties here -Template:WalesinUK as well as the later treaties relevant to the UK itself for use on pages dealing with Wales and those treaties.siarach 14:05, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
  • The purpose of the template is to list the legislative acts which brought together the current Home Nations, to form the UK. Orkney, Shetland, Wessex, etc are sub-components of the Home Nations....and thus do not belong on the template. It would not be practical to list them, and most did not involve legislative acts. I totally oppose a fork of the template. --JW1805 (Talk) 16:19, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
(pasted from Template talk:UKFormation) What you want is a template for the history of the home nations within the British Isles (or something along those lines) - not one for the formation of the UK as this is not something which can be pinpointed any earlier than the union of crowns in 1603. ATM this template is very misleading,anglocentric and contains several treaties without direct relevance with regard to the formation of the United Kingdom. siarach 17:57, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Why not have a forked template, two separate templates for intranational affairs of Scotland and England, with a combined legislative template between Scotland and England since 1603? It all began with James. Neustriano 21:14, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Violation" of the act

Claims that some of the acts' articles have been violated have been added recently. These claims are too important to leave without explanation or justification---if anyone can provide references explaining how they were violated and who did the violation, please add them (and I think that only some kind of legal ruling will do here). Otherwise I'll remove the text in a couple of days. [I've already deleted the part about the mint since the Scottish mint did continue after the union---it wasn't abolished until 1817.] StockholmSyndrome 10:40, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

  • I agree, tt is a poorly written section in general and very misleading. I will reinstate your edit reverted by a user with no explanation given. Astrotrain 18:54, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
The whole thing is a bit bizzare. The Act essentially stipulated a number of broad Big Principles, and then a lot of highly detailed short-term conditions to "grease" the the thing enough for it to work at all in practice, and there's a significant difference between violating the first and allowing the second to lapse into obsolesence, which I suspect is the case for most of these.
Also, note Article Sixteen: "And a Mint shall be continued in Scotland ... subject to such Regulations and Alterations as Her Majesty Her Heirs or Successors, or the Parliament of Great Britain shall think fit". If the Mint's been closed, (or, a possible legal fiction, simply moved offsite), because the Crown or Parliament said it should, it seems perfectly legal for that to have happened under the Act. Indeed, there is no longer a mint in England for it to be subject to the sules of! Shimgray | talk | 23:24, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
"Indeed, there is no longer a mint in England for it to be subject to the sules of!" England still considers Wales to be more or less a part of it, in legal terms, even with devolution etc. --MacRusgail 17:53, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Okay, time for another. Articles 13 & 14; coals and malt. These do not say "coals etc. shall never be taxed"; they say "Coals etc. in Scotland shall not be subject to this specific tax currently in force in England". Note "during the continuance of the Duties" as a key phrase. If that specific tax is still in force, there'd be an issue... but ten to one says that if you look carefully, when (if?) those taxes were reinstated in June 1707 and September 1710, they'll have been explicitly applied to the whole UK. Note that Art15 basically says "from here on, no exemptions unless Parliament explicitly says so at the time" Shimgray | talk | 23:30, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
As for salt, I have no idea - it basically says after 1714, tax on salt would be consistent across the UK, some implementing details, and Scottish fish laws remain in force unless altered by Parliament. There's then something about fixed payments, but this is "during the present allowances" for the one section and "alterable by the Parliament of Great Britain" for the other, so it could lapse or be altered legally - wouldn't have to be broken. I'm taking it out for now, unless someone can figure out how it's been breached. Shimgray | talk | 23:35, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
"it wasn't abolished until 1817." - Therefore, the violation occurred in 1817. If you can even supply me with the date of the violation, why are you denying it was violated? The violation of the Royal Burghs have tended to take place even later, but still constitute violations. In fact, most of the articles have been violated. --MacRusgail 17:39, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Agree that this section is a bit bizzare, unsouced, and possible OR. --JW1805 (Talk) 18:46, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Also agree. I note that User:Mais_oui! has insisted on readding the POV text taken out, so I've tagged NPOV until cleared on talk. Astrotrain 20:24, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Looking up, I fear I may not have explained myself very well last night. (I plead tiredness). Basically, here's the problems which the "it's been violated!" argument fails to take into account, as far as I can see.
a) The Act was not laying down how things would be forever and ever amen; it was laying down how things would work for the next two years, the next five years, the next ten years - how the big sticking points of taxation and political rights, which needed be dealt with, would be handled in order to get economic and political union working.
b) The Act explicitly states in many cases that the conditions will only apply for a short time - they don't apply to, say, all taxes on windows, just the taxes on windows which were in force at the time of changeover. It doesn't pose any legal problem to Parliament saying later "well, we had agreed windows would be taxed from 1705 to 1710, it's 1710 now, we're going to reintroduce the window tax - and by the way, it applies to Scotland now as well"
c) Legally changing the law does not mean you "violate" the old law; my girlfriend isn't violating the Representation of the People Act 1867 when she goes to vote, because the clause saying the vote is only given to men has since been repealed or amended.
d) Finally, it's an act of Parliament. Parliament has rarely shown much compunction over repealing what it feels are outdated bits of old legislation - look at how much of Magna Carta is left.
My contention is... many of these (the taxes ones) aren't violations, because they were explicitly short-term and explicitly allowed for those substances to be taxed in future; the mint isn't a violation because Parliament is legally entitled to say "no, actually, we're not going to have a mint in Scotland any more".
I'm a bit lost on the Royal Burghs, and you may have a point there... but as an aside, would it have been legal under Scottish law as of 1706 for this to be done? I'm curious... Shimgray | talk | 21:09, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of sourced material

Sourced material is being persistently removed. For future reference, here is the bit being targetted:

-START-

  • Article 8 - salt. Violated [1].
  • Articles 12 & 13, referring to malt ("That during the continuance of the Duty payable in England on Malt, which determines 24th June 1707, Scotland shall not be charged with that Duty"). and coal duty. Both violated, in particular since malt, and the products are currently taxed.
  • Article 16 states "And a Mint shall be continued in Scotland under the same Rules as the Mint in England." The Scottish mint was abolished.
  • Article 21 - the rights of many Royal Burghs in Scotland have been infringed, e.g. Wigtown, and South Queensferry and many have no independent legal status now. The latter has been absorbed into Edinburgh, which violates the treaty simply by its being abolished as a Royal Burgh.

There are also claims that the Scottish Devolution Act violates portions of the Treaty.

-END-

This article is bad enough as it is without being "sat" on. --Mais oui! 04:59, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

What is the source of this information? The link on Article 8 is only to the text of Article 8 on wikisource so does not demonstrate a violation. Kurando | ^_^ 08:33, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
The larger question here is this: is the Act of Union some sort of "super statute" that cannot be modified by subsequent legislation (like the Constitution of the United States? Or, is it simply an Act passed by the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland which can be modified by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The most common argument (the one that has been the de facto operating principle since the Union) is that the United Parliament inherited all the powers of the two successor Parliaments. Anything that either Parliament could do (like change the salt tax), the United Parliament can do. What happens if every single person in England and Scotland want some part of the Act changed? If the United Parliament can't change it, who can? The Parliaments of England and Scotland do not exist anymore. One can't claim that "the Parliament of Scotland didn't have parliament supremacy"....and then claim that it was able to pass a law that forever binds all the people of England and Scotland, a law which can never be modified. That is a strange paradox. What some people view as a case affirming the "super-statue" nature of the Acts (MacCormick v. Lord Advocate) really is not (it dances around the issue a bit, but doesn't give a decisive view). Perhaps it would be better to create a new section in this article to discuss this issue in a NPOV manner, rather than just stating that parts of the Act have been "violated", which is inherently POV. --JW1805 (Talk) 21:56, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
"The Parliaments of England and Scotland do not exist anymore." - Trouble is that they do. Scotland now has a new parliament, and there is a good argument for saying that England's never went away, since it retained all of its pre-union features, location, tradition, religious associations etc. For Westminster, it was business as usual after the Union, except for the addition of some extra members. --MacRusgail 15:13, 3 July 2006 (UTC) p.s. The relationship of devolution to the Treaty is a thorny issue, and one I am not up on completely myself. There are certain features of it, which could be said to run counter to it.
Ah, but the Scottish Parliament is not the same as the Parliament of Scotland. The former is an entity created by the United Parliament which devolved some powers to it. And the UK Parliament is not the same as the Parliament of England, even though, as you say, it seems like they are. In a strict legal sence, neither the Parliament of England or the Parliament of Scotland exist anymore, since the two formally independent kingdoms (Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland) do not exist anymore. --JW1805 (Talk) 19:42, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
You're wrong. If you mean that the parliament we have now is not the same as the one we had before Scotland had its "Anschluss", then you're right. But the terms Scottish Parliament and Parliament of Scotland are used interchangeably, and certainly were of the pre-1707 one by officialdom.
Secondly, it was properly the Kingdom of Scots, not of Scotland, although there are usages of the latter. The UK parliament is the same as the pre-union parliament, just as the parliament at Brussels is more or less the same parliament it was before the former Iron Curtain states started sending representatives. Westminster is merely the English parliament expanded to include Scottish and (some) Irish representatives. That's why you find pre-union English parliamentary & legal traditions surviving within it, and not Scottish ones. There is a famous quote from this period, from a member of the "British" parliament (the Speaker I believe if I remember rightly(: "Have we not bought Scotland and the right to tax her?" When I can reference that quote properly, it shall be appearing in the article. It ought to put pay to certain wishful thinking. --MacRusgail 12:28, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cui Bono?

This is a poor, badly organised account of a major even in British history, clearly corrupted by viewpoints with little or no interest in historical truth. I actually find it deeply embarrasing that some innocent soul might come across this page in their simple-minded search for the facts. Would the traditions of the Scottish Parliament that were ignored after 1707 include the reintroduction of forms of feudal servitude for the wretched mining community? I will attempt a systematic rewrite as soon as time permits; but I suspect that will be immediately subject to the manipulation that haunts so many pages of this encyclopedia. Rcpaterson 17:04, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Identical acts?

The version we have on Wikisource has a preface which seems to say it was the one passed in Edinburgh; the comment about "in pursuance of the fourth Act of the third Session of this Parliament" seems to refer to the Scottish "Treaty with England Act" of 1705 (the third session of Anne's first Parliament; c.4 or c.50 depending on how you count), and the reference to a different act being "made in England the third year of Her Majesties Reign" makes this clear (emphasis mine).

This strongly suggests to me that the preface, at least, of these two acts must have been different - it wouldn't make sense for the English to refer to "the fourth Act, etc" without clarifying. So were any other changes made? Did the English one have additional sections which were only binding on England and not relevant to the Scottish context? I've noted a reference to "sections" of the Act above, but the source version we're looking at has no such sections... Shimgray | talk | 17:26, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV cleanup

This article is listed on the NPOV backlog. Since some disputed text seems to have been cleaned up, and there's no discussion suggesting further disagreement, the tag is removed. If you disagree with this, please re-tag the disputed section with {{NPOV-section}} (or the article with {{NPOV}}) and post to Talk. Also consider improving the article yourself. -- Steve Hart 22:40, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] the 300th anniversary of the Union, which occurs 2 days before the Scottish Parliament's general election.

This is not true, because the said election is scheduled for May 3, 2007. The 300th anniversary of May 1, 1707 is May 12th, 2007, as a result of the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in 1752. TharkunColl 15:37, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What is really the right date of the Acts of Union?

I heard on radio 4 (in the UK - obviously) that the date we remember for the act of union is wrong, as the gregorian calendar has since intervened. Hearing that I went to the wikipedia page on the Gregorian Calendar, which suggests that the Gregorian calendar was introduced before the Act of Union in Scotland but after the Act of Union in England. Therefore each act would have been based on a different calendar, and a different date.

What's the correct answer? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 212.219.158.121 (talk) 12:28, 17 January 2007 (UTC).

The Acts (which were signed at different times by the English and Scottish parliaments) came into effect on 1st May 1707. The changover to the Gregorian calendar (in both England and Scotland) did not take place until 1752. All anniversaries, such as birthdays, were now legally expressed on the new calandar with an apparent 11 day difference. The true anniversay of the Act of Union is therefore 12th May. The idea that Scotland switched to the Gregorian calendar earlier is a misconception. What happened is that Scotland adopted 1st January as New Year's Day around 1600, but this was still a date on the old calendar. England retained 25th March as its legal New Year's Day until 1751 - and, as expressed on the new calendar (5th April) - still retained it thereafter as the start of the financial year (though this was shifted to 6th April in 1800). TharkunColl 12:42, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] English parliament dissolved?

Was the English parliament dissolved in 1707? The answer is yes. By my calculation it was the 276th time an English parliament had been dissolved. It was then recalled, in the same place, with all its traditions, personel, standing orders, committees, paid officials, etc. etc... and with the addition of a few new members representing Scotland. There is no break in continuity (and the same applies to 1801 as well). No one can deny that in practical terms the parliament at Westminster continued uninterrupted. What I'm saying here is that in legal terms the same is also true. Dissolution of parliaments was what happened at the end of every sitting. In this sense the dissolution of the English parliament in 1707 was absolutely standard practice. I suggest we amend the article accordingly. TharkunColl 19:08, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Weasle Words

“ The Acts of Union were far from universally popular in Scotland ”

Very poor wordage here. "Far from universally popular". Sounds like a bad case of WP:WEASEL. Truth is they weren't popular, and the (well respected) reference which I provided for the Scotland article happily details that. I will clean it up at the weekend. SFC9394 19:49, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Template_talk:UKFormation#User:Neustrianos_edits

There should be a total addition of all Acts of Union on the template and separate articles for each one, or we should merge this article with the Union of the Crowns article and leave no confusion as to what the Parliaments were doing in the meantime. After all, there are no articles for the individual Acts between 1603-1707. I myself would like to know what went on in that time and I'm sure our readers would too. Who has access to those files? Neustriano 21:09, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Seafield's auld song?

I'd like to have a nickel for every unsourced "quotation" that has the earl of Seafield, as chancellor of Scotland, saying something like, "Now there's ane end to an auld song." Do any of the well-informed contributors know whether that has any basis in fact? — OtherDave 22:34, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Life and Work

There was a letter on the Treaty of Union in this issue of Life and Work, the magazine of the Church of Scotland. – Kaihsu (talk) 21:30, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Date of formation of the United Kingdom?

After much debate, the editors of the United Kingdom article seem to have settled on 1707 as being the foundation of the state (I note with concern though that this date lacks any external referencing, per official Wikipedia policy WP:VERIFY).

But this article - List of countries by formation dates - claims that the UK was actually founded in 1603 (again, completely unreferenced). Both articles cannot be correct, so which is it? Please come to the party armed with some proper external refs, because I am not sure if we can stomach yet another verbally diarrhetic Talk page splurge with largely consists of ad hominem attacks and statements of totally unsourced opinion. --Mais oui! (talk) 23:36, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 'Significance' section.

quote: "Scotland entered the eighteenth century a backward, benighted, and impoverished country. However, its joining with world superpower England imbued it with the necessary financial and military stability to undergo rapid intellectual, social, and technological development. Within a century the "Scottish Renaissance" was in full swing, with the Scottish Enlightenment and philosophers such as Adam Smith in the forefront of the new science of economics and MacAdam a leading engineer.[8]"

First of all any section called 'Significance' must come under the classification 'historical interpretation' and as such is inevitably going to have content which is both highly conjectural and subjective. One must really question the merits of including such a section at all.

However, the wording of the above example in particular, would appear to me to be inflammatory, perhaps even beyond that, although I hasten to add I am not a lawyer.

One cannot argue with the adjective 'impoverished' although one could easily question why the reasons for that impoverishment, from the 'rough wooing' onwards, were not entered into. However the impression that omission gives, that Scotland always was 'impoverished', is quite misleading.

Similarly the "Within a century the "Scottish Renaissance" was in full swing, ", ignoring for the moment that the term 'Scottish Renaissance' is mostly used to mean the 20th C revival in Scottish Literature, this infers that Scotland somehow missed out on the 'The Renaissance'.

This is ridiculous.

Because of Scotland's extensive trade and contacts with the Low Countries in the Middle Ages, Scotland was not only rich but fully 'up to speed' with 'The Renaissance' at the very time it was happening in Italy and the Low Countries. This can be seen by the quality of art in Scotland, in particular the improvements in perspective which are synonymous with the Renaissance, are evident in Scotland from that time (and nearly a hundred years before similar improvements appeared in English art). The corpus of literary work produced by the Makaris rivals that of any other European nation in the Middle Ages and surpasses most.

The adjectives 'backward' and 'benighted' as well as being somewhat tautological, are also highly inaccurate and inflammatory. One abiding element in the cultural spine of Scotland over the centuries has been a very clear obsession with education, so much so, that this was one of the areas that even the parcel of rogues insisted be reserved to Scotland.

There are so many examples of this, from John Duns Scotus and innumerable 'educational exchange schemes' between Scotland, France, Italy and England, to the first example of a measure of compulsory education in Europe in 1496 to the other acts which eventually lead to the compulsory provision of a school and schoolmaster in every parish in 1696. The first compulsory universal education Act in the World.

The intellectual contributions of the likes of Napier and the amazing Gregory family helped change the World. James Gregory in particular with the discovery and proof of the calculus, mathematical description of planetary movements, the invention of a reflecting telescope, the discovery of the diffraction grating, his groundbreaking work on mathematical series including 'Taylor's' series, test of convergence and the first series for calculating Pi, made a huge contribution. He died at a tragically young age, which may be partly why many of his achievements are wrongly attributed to others (Newton, Liebniz, Taylor etc.) and this all took place before the Union.

Even after the Union Scotland's particular emphasis on universal and egalitarian education carried on. With, for example, free university education for poor Highland students who would arrive at say, Aberdeen university, barefoot and with a barrel of herring and a sack of meal to sustain them through the term. Where the Laird's son sat next to the Ploughman's in the classroom. Where, indeed a ploughman's son could go on to be one of the World's greatest poets.

This was not to happen anywhere else in the World until Prussia followed suit.

Whereas Scotland lead the way in education, England I'm afraid, languished at the bottom of the international league tables.

So to somehow suggest the Scottish Enlightenment was due to English influence is some kind of joke. In fact if Scotland had not protected its education system then for example, Burns, would never have happened.

As Voltaire said "We look to Scotland for all of our ideas of civilization."

Or if you prefer more recent neutral commentary, read Arthur Herman's book on the Scottish Enlightenment.

Oh and MacAdam, laudable as his contribution was, is simply not an Enlightenment period figure, whereas Hume, Playfair, Hutcheson, Black and many others who were, are rather more worthy of mention. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chicmac (talk • contribs) 18:08, 2 June 2008 (UTC)


I completely agree, with this. The last paragraph is beyond ridiculous and is a very typical (Unionist) interpratation of the Act of Union. There is a lot of evidence to suggest quite contrary information that is provided in the "significance" section, perticulary in the field of economics. Could someone please amend this section or at least delete it until something decent is written. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.87.17.34 (talk) 02:05, 7 June 2008 (UTC)