The Duke of Argyll made a remarkable speech at a
Unionist meeting at Cambridge on Wednesday. He described his own visit to the field of Bannockburn, and how he could not help shouting with joy when he recalled the victory of Robert Bruce over Edward II.; and yet he contended that the Scotch defeat at Flodden was richly deserved, and that, with all his national pride, he could not deny that the Union of Scotland with England was the most beneficent of measures. Speaking of the separate Scottish Legislature, he said :—" The mere fact of a separate Parliament and a separate Executive generated such feelings of hatred between the two nations, that in the early part of the eighteenth century they were on the point of a final and bloody quarrel. It was an historical fact that the Scotch Parliament had come to a resolution that they would cease to honour even the united Crown ; they had resolved that the Sovereign who succeeded Queen Anne in this country should not be Sovereign of Scotland. That was the precedent for which they must look to a separate Parliament." "As a Scotehman, he wished to maintain all the memories of their national independence. He liked to keep their Church, their law, and their separate institutions. But they rejoiced in their complete incorporation with the English people." And he called attention to Mr. John Morley's paradoxical remark at Oxford that the Parliament of the United Kingdom, though it is to lay down the limits of the Irish statutory Parliament, is nevertheless " utterly incompetent to deal with the needs of Ireland." No speech more discriminating in its respect for national feeling, and its stout resistance to legislative spars. tion, has been made since the issue arose, than this speech of the Duke of Argyll's at Cambridge.
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