How Scotland Lost her Parliament. By Charles Waddie. (Waddie and
Co., Limited, Edinburgh.)—The author of this curious little book is the leader of the Home-rule movement in Scotland. His object in writing it is to advocate the revival of a Scotch Parliament, on the ground that by its establishment Scotch interests and public business will be better attended to than they are at the present moment. So he tells over again, in a rambling, dreary, and controversial fashion, the story of how the present Union between Scotland and England was brought about, and of
the discontent which followed in its -wake. No doubt there wore -some "scandalous" transactions in connection with the Union between Scotland and England—or transactions which would be regarded as "scandalous" now—but when its general results are looked to, it mat be considered to have been a great blessing to the United Kingdom, and especially to Scotland. The true meaning both of Scotland's gallant and successful struggle for Independence, and of the character which that struggle gave to the inevitable Union, has been much better understood and expressed by Carlyle than by Mr. Waddle. No doubt the author of How Scotland Lost her Parliament is terribly, even grotesquely, in earnest. But when ho tells "this generation of Scotsmen," that to them it has been entrusted as a "sacred duty" not only "to undo the fraud of 1707," but "to arrest the decay of our nation," we should say that "this generation" would be sufficiently unbelieving to ask for a sign of national "decay," if not to greet any declaration of the kind with "inextinguishable laughter."
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