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Essays and addresses

The Stewart King had fled upon the arrival of William of Orange ; Mary the wife of William soon died without issue and all of Annes seventeen children had died young (when we read of Queen Anne and smile at her dowdiness and bourgeois tastes and manners, how many of us think of the tragedy of a heart-broken mother who had seen the fair flowers of her own garden fade and die one by one?).

James II was still alive at St Ger- mains, and even had he been dead, he had a bonny son the Scot is a queer mixture of sentiment and thrift and it was quite within the limits of pos- sibility that when the last daughter of James should die, James himself might be proclaimed King of Scotland or his son James Francis, or hie grandson, Charles Edward, more ad- mired and more charming.

And so negotiations began and were carried on which resulted in the aboli- tion of the separate Parliaments, and the formation of the one Parliament for all the Island.

This may seem a backward step, and 1707 may appear to be a date of evil omen to "The Empire" and yet the Union was in- evitable if peace were to exist between the two peoples and the same monarch reign over them.

In the latter view that is the certainty of having the same king is to be found the real sig- nificance, as it was the actual raisorj detre of the Union in Queen Annes time, two hundred and three years ago.