Treaty of Union: voting patterns and political influence

Abstract

The making of the Treaty of Union, which created the United Kingdom of Great Britain from 1 May 1707, remains an issue of political contro versy (Smout 1963; Ferguson 1977; Riley 1978). That an incorporating parliamentary union, which had been on the po litical agenda since 1702, was actually accomplished over five months in the last crucial session of the Scottish estates from 6 October 1706, can be attributed to various influences. Diplomatic brinkmanship, military inti midation and political manipulation on the part of the English ministry of Queen Anne were compounded by economic defeatism, financial chica nery and, above all, political ineptitude on the part of the Scottish estates. The concluding statement of the queen's commissioner, James Douglas, second duke of Queensberry, on 25 March 1707 that the Treaty would prove a visionary act of statesmanship (Thomson 1824, p. 491) should not obscure the view of historians as distinct from politicians that its ma king was primarily a self-inflicted act of political laceration which sacri ficed national independence for material advancement. A 50 field database has been constructed principally from primary sour ces to measure how, not analyse why, the Scottish estates voted themselves out of political existence (1). A separate record has been created for each of the 230 members cited in the parliamentary rolls (2). The database seeks to provide a comprehensive picture of political behaviour based on recorded voting divisions in the last parliamentary session of the Scottish estates rather than rely on voting samples which arguably move analysis away from historical patterns into the realms of mathematical probability. As well as fields separately itemizing the name, the constituency and any remarkable features influencing voting for each member of the Scot tish estates, coding has been resorted to for estate membership, parlia mentary status, national party affiliation and the regional location of con stituencies. The latter field has proved notably useful in identifying terri torial influences in a unicameral parliament for which the franchise of commissioners from the shires and burghs as of nobles was inherently feudal.