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At the close of the American civil war it was believed by Irishmen that the strained relations between England and America would lead to open conflict. An organization named Fenians formed a plan for a rising in Ireland, which was to be simultaneous with a raid into Canada by way of America.

The United States Government took vigorous action in the matter of the Canadian raid, and the failure of this and of other violent attempts at home put an end to the least creditable of all such organizations.

It was in 1869 that Mr. Gladstone realized his long-cherished plan for the disestablishment of the Church in Ireland. The generations which had hoped and striven for this had passed away, and in the Ireland which remained, there was scarcely spirit enough left to rejoice over anything. The words Home Rule were the only ones with power to arouse hope. With the Liberal Party on their side, this seemed possible of attainment. In 1875 Charles Parnell entered the House of Commons and became the leader of a Home Rule Party. But the question of evictions, of which there had been 10,000 in four years, became so pressing, that he organized a National Land League, which had for its object the relief of present distress, and the substitution of peasant-proprietorship for the existing landlord system; an agrarian scheme, or dream, to which Mr. Parnell devoted the rest of his life. Mr. Parnell's weapons were parliamentary. He introduced an obstructive method in legislation which caused extreme irritation and finally antagonism between the Liberal Party and his own. This, together with the unfounded suspicion of complicity in the murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish, in 1882, militated against Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Act, which was defeated in 1886; and the cause awaited another champion.

It has been Ireland's misfortune to be geographically allied to one of the greatest European Powers. She has been fighting for centuries against the "despotism of fact." She has never once loosened the grasp fastened upon her in 1171; never had control of her capital city, which, built by the Northmen, has been the home of her political masters ever since. Of course everyone knows that when the English Government solemnly doubts the capacity of the Irish people for Home Rule, its solicitude is for England, not Ireland.

Francis Meagher, when on trial for his life, said: "If I have committed a crime, it is because I have read the history of Ireland!" One need not be an Irish patriot to be in rebellion against the English rule in that land; and no Protestant can read without shame and indignation the crimes which have been committed in the name of his Church.

But, in view of the small results of more than eight centuries of resistance, would it not be wise for the Irish people to abandon the fight against the "despotism of fact," to give up the attitude of a conquered people with rebellion in their hearts? Is not this the right moment, when England is manifesting a desire to be more just, for Ireland, deeply injured although she is, to accept the olive branch, and call a truce?

A SHORT HISTORY OF SCOTLAND.

The northern extremity of the British Isles, bristling with mountains and with its ragged coast-line deeply fringed by the sea, told in advance the character of its people. Scotland is the child of the mountains; and in spite of all that has been done to change their native character, the word Caledonia still invokes the same picturesque, liberty-loving race which in the first century, under the name of Picts, defied Agricola and his Roman legions, and the wall they had builded. If they have borrowed their name from Ireland, if they have used the speech and consented to wear the political yoke of the Anglo-Saxon, they have accepted these things only as convenient garments for a proud Scottish nationality, which has defied all efforts to change its essential character.

About four centuries after the Roman invasion, a colony of Scots migrated to the opposite coast, under Fergus, and set up their little kingdom in Argyleshire, taking with them, perhaps, the sacred "Stone of Destiny" upon which a long line of Irish kings had been crowned, and which tradition asserts was "Jacob's Pillow." The Picts and the Irish Scots were both of the Celtic race, and if they fought, it was as brothers do, ready in an instant to embrace and make common cause, which they first did against the Romans. A common enemy is the surest healer of domestic feuds, and there were many of these to bring together the two Celtic branches dwelling on the same soil after the fifth century. Then came the more peaceful fusion through a common religious faith. St. Columba had been preceded by St. Nimian. But it was the Irish saint from Donegal who did for the Picts what St. Patrick had done for the Irish Scots. In the history of the Church there has never been an awakening of purer spiritual ardor than that which irradiated from Columba's monastery at Iona.

In 1295, so intolerable had his position become, that Baliol threw off the yoke of vassalage, secured an alliance with France, and gathered such of his nobles as he could about him, prepared to resist the authority of Edward; whereupon that enraged King marched into the rebellious land, swept victoriously from one city to another, gathering up towns and castles by the way; then took the sacred Stone of Destiny from Scone as a memorial of his conquest, and left the penitent vassal King helpless and forlorn in his humiliated kingdom. It was then that the famous stone was built into the coronation-chair, where it still remains.

Robert Bruce, who stands forth as the greatest character in Scottish history, was twelve years old when his grandfather was defeated by Baliol in this competition. No family in the vassal kingdom was more trusted by England's King, nor more friendly to his pretensions. The young Robert's father had accompanied King Edward to Palestine in his own youth, and he himself was being trained at the English Court. His English mother had large estates in England, and, in fact there was everything to bind him to the King's cause. He and his father, and the High Steward of Scotland, together with other Scottish-Norman nobles, had been with the King in his triumphal march through Scotland when Baliol was dethroned, and at the time of the rising under Wallace, Robert Bruce had not one thing in common with him or his cause. And as for the people in the Highlands, if he ever thought of them at all, it was as troublesome malcontents, who needed to be ruled with a strong hand. Wallace was in rebellion against an established authority, to which all his own antecedents reconciled him. How the change was wrought, how his bold and ardent spirit came to its final resolve, we can only surmise. Was it through a complicated struggle of forces, in which ambition played the greatest part? Or did the splendid heroism of Wallace, and the spirit it evoked in the people, awaken a slumbering patriotism in his own romantic soul? Or was it the prescience of a leader and statesman, who saw in this newly developed popular force an opportunity for a double triumph, the emancipation of Scotland, and the realization of his own kingship?

Whatever the process, a change was going on in his soul. He wavered, sometimes inclining to the party of Wallace, and sometimes to that of the King, until the year 1304. In that year, the very one in which Wallace died, he made a secret compact with the Bishop of Lamberton, pledging mutual help against any opponents. While at the Court of Edward, shortly after this, he discovered that the King had learned of this compromising paper. There was nothing left but flight. He mounted his horse and swiftly returned to Scotland. Now the die was cast. His only competitor for the throne was Comyn. They met to confer over some plan of combination, and in a dispute which arose, Bruce slew his rival. Whether it was premeditated, or in the heat of passion, who could say? But Comyn was the one obstacle to his purpose, and he had slain him, had slain the highest noble in the state! All of England, and now much of Scotland, would be against him; but he could not go back. He resolved upon a bold course. He went immediately to Scone, ascended the throne, and surrounded by a small band of followers, was crowned King of Scotland, March 27, 1306. He soon learned the desperate nature of the enterprise upon which he had embarked. There was nothing in his past to inspire the confidence of the patriots at the North, and at the South he was pursued with vindictive fury by the friends of the slain Comyn. Edward, stirred as never before, was preparing for an invasion, issuing proclamations; no mercy to be shown to the rebels. Bruce's English estates, inherited from his mother, were confiscated, and an outlaw and a fugitive, he was excommunicated by the Pope! Unable to meet the forces sent by Edward, he placed his Queen in the care of a relative and then disappeared, wandering in the Highlands, hiding for one whole winter on the coast of Ireland and supposed to be dead. His Queen and her ladies were torn from their refuge and his cousin hanged.

It was on the burn two miles from Stirling that Bruce assembled his 30,000 men, and made his plans to meet Edward with his 100,000. On the morning of the 23d of June, 1314, he exhorted his Scots to fight for their liberty. How they did it, the world will never forget! And while Scotland endures, and as long as there are Scotsmen with warm blood coursing in their veins, they will never cease to exult at the name Bannockburn! Thirty thousand English fell upon the field. Twenty-seven barons and two hundred knights, and seven hundred squires were lying in the dust, and twenty-two barons and sixty knights were prisoners. Never was there a more crushing defeat.

Still England refused to acknowledge the independence of the kingdom, and Bruce crossed the border with his army. The Pope was appealed to by Edward, and issued a pacifying bull in 1317, addressed to "Edward, King of England," and "the noble Robert de Bruis, conducting himself as King of Scotland." Bruce declined to accept it until he was addressed as King of Scotland, and then proceeded to capture Berwick. The Scottish Parliament sent an address to the Pope, from which a few interesting extracts are here made:

"It has pleased God to restore us to liberty, by one most valiant Prince and King, Lord Robert, who has undergone all manner of toil, fatigue, hardship, and hazard. To him we are resolved to adhere in all things, both on account of his merit, and for what he has done for us. But, if this Prince should leave those principles he has so nobly pursued, and consent that we be subjected to the King of England, we will immediately expel him as our enemy, and will choose another king, for as long as one hundred of us remain alive, we will never be subject to the English. For it is not glory, nor riches, nor honor, but it is liberty alone, that we contend for, which no honest man will lose but with his life."

The spirit manifested in this had its effect, and the Pope consented to address Bruce by his title, "King of Scotland." After delaying the evil day as long as possible, England at last, in 1328, concluded a treaty recognizing Scotland as an independent kingdom, in which occurred these words: "And we renounce whatever claims we or our ancestors in bygone times have laid in any way over the kingdom of Scotland."

Concerning the character of Robert Bruce, historians are not agreed. To fathom his motives would have been difficult at the time; how much more so then after six centuries. We only know that he leaped into an arena from which nature and circumstances widely separated him, gave a free Scotland to her people, and made himself the hero of her great epic.

This ablest of the Stuart kings was assassinated in 1437 by the enemies he had shorn of power, his own kindred removing the bolts to admit his murderers. He was the only sovereign of the Stuart line who inherited the heroic qualities of his great ancestor Robert Bruce, a line which almost fatally entangled England, and sprinkled the pages of history with tragedies, four out of the fourteen dying violent deaths, two of broken hearts, while two others were beheaded.

Europe was now unconsciously on the brink of a moral and spiritual revolution, a revolution which was going to affect no country more profoundly than Scotland. The Church of Rome, deeply embedded and wrought into the very structure of every European nation, seemed like a part of nature. As soon would men have expected to see the foundations of the continent removed, and yet there was a little rivulet of thought coursing through the brain of an obscure monk in Germany which was going to undermine and overthrow it, and cause a new Christendom to arise upon its ruins. And strangely, too, as if by pre-arrangement, that wonderful new device--the printing press--stood ready, waiting to disseminate the propaganda of a Reformed Church!

During the winter in Edinburgh the gayeties gave fresh offence. Knox declared that "the Queen had danced excessively till after midnight." And then he preached a sermon on the "Vices of Princes," which was an open attack upon her uncles, the Guises in France. Mary sent for the preacher, and reproved him for disrespect in trying to make her an object of contempt and hatred to her people, adding, "I know that my uncles and ye are not of one religion, and therefore I do not blame you, albeit you have no good opinion of them." The General Assembly passed resolutions recommending that it be enacted by Parliament that "all papistical idolatry should be suppressed in the realm, not alone among the subjects, but in the Queen's own person." Mary, with her accustomed tact, replied, that she "was not yet persuaded in the Protestant religion, nor of the impiety in the Mass. But although she would not leave the religion wherein she had been nourished and brought up, neither would she press the conscience of any, and, on their part, they should not press her conscience."

It will never be known whether Mary was cognizant of or, even worse, accessory to Darnley's murder, which occurred at midnight a few hours after she had left him, February 9, 1567.

Suspicion pointed at once to the Earl of Bothwell. The Court acquitted him, but public opinion did not. And it was Mary's marriage with this man which was her undoing. Innocent or guilty, the world will never forgive her for having married, three months after her husband's death, the man believed to be his murderer! Even her friends deserted her. A prisoner at Lochleven Castle, she was compelled to sign an act of abdication in favor of her son. A few of the Queen's adherents, the Hamiltons, Argyles, Setons, Livingstons, Flemings, and others gathered a small army in her support and aided her escape, which was quickly followed by a defeat in an engagement near Glasgow. Mary then resolved upon the step which led her by a long, dark, and dreary pathway to the scaffold. She crossed into England and threw herself upon the mercy of her cousin, Elizabeth.

But James had already made his choice between the two forms of Protestantism, and the basis of his choice was the sacredness of the royal prerogative. A theology which conflicted with that, was not the one for his kingdom. He would have no religion in which presbyters and synods and laymen were asserting authority. The King, God's anointed, was the natural head of the Church, and should determine its policy. Such was the theory which even at this early time had become firmly lodged in the acute and narrow mind of the precocious youth, and which throughout his entire reign was the inspiration of his policy. In the proceedings following the "Ruthven Raid," as it is called, he openly manifested his determination to introduce episcopacy into his kingdom.

So the conflict was now between the clergy and the Crown. The latter gained the first victory. Parliament, in 1584, affirmed the supreme authority of the King in all matters civil and religious. The act placed unprecedented powers in his hands, saying, "These powers by the gift of Heaven belong to his Majesty and to his successors." And so it was that in 1584 the current started which, after running its ruinous course, was to terminate in 1649 in the tragedy at Whitehall. There was a reaction from the first triumph of divine right, and in 1592 the Act of Royal Supremacy was repealed, and the General Assembly succeeded in obtaining parliamentary sanction for the authority of the presbytery.

Statesmen in England, and some in Scotland, believed there would be no peace until the two countries were organically joined. In the face of great opposition a treaty of union was ratified by the Scottish Parliament in 1707. The country was given a representation of forty-five members in the English House of Commons, and sixteen peers in the House of Lords, and it was provided that the Presbyterian Church should remain unchanged in worship, doctrine, and government "to the people of the land in all succeeding generations." With this final Act the Scottish Parliament passed out of existence.

The wisdom of this measure has been abundantly justified by the results--a growth in all that makes for material prosperity, a richer intellectual life, and peace. After centuries of anarchy and misrule and aimless upheavals, Scotland had reached a haven. Her triumph has been a moral and an intellectual triumph, not political. In intellectual splendor her people may challenge the world, and in moral elevation and in righteousness they will find few peers. But candor compels the admission that Scotland has no more than Ireland proved herself capable of maintaining a separate nationality. Without the excuse of her sister island, never the victim of a foreign conquest, left to herself, with her own kings and government for nearly a thousand years, what do we see? A brave, spirited, warlike race with a passion for liberty dominated and actually effaced by vicious kings, intriguing regents, and a corrupt nobility; only once, under Wallace and Bruce, rising to heroic proportions, and then to throw off a foreign yoke and under leaders who were both of Norman extraction.

Never once were her native oppressors checked or awed; never once did an outraged people unite under a great political leader; and only one sovereign after Bruce can be said to have had great kingly qualities. What are we to conclude? Are we not compelled to believe that Scotland reached her highest destiny when she was joined to England, and when she bestowed her leaven of righteousness and her moral strength and the genius of her sons, and received in exchange the political protection of her great neighbor?

SOVEREIGNS AND RULERS OF ENGLAND.

ANGLO-SAXON LINE Reign began A.D.

Egbert ........................................... 800 Ethelwulf ........................................ 836 Ethelbald ........................................ 857 Ethelbert ........................................ 860 Ethelred ......................................... 866 Alfred ........................................... 871 Edward the Elder ................................. 901 Athelstan ........................................ 925 Edmund ........................................... 940 Edred ............................................ 946 Edwy ............................................. 955 Edgar ............................................ 957 Edward the Martyr ................................ 975 Ethelred the Unready ............................. 978 Edmund Ironside .................................. 1016

DANISH LINE

Canute ........................................... 1017 Harold I ......................................... 1030 Hardi Canute ..................................... 1039

SAXON LINE

Edward the Confessor ............................. 1041 Harold II ........................................ 1066

NORMAN LINE

William I ........................................ 1066 William II ....................................... 1087 Henry I .......................................... 1100 Stephen .......................................... 1135

PLANTAGENET LINE

HOUSE OF LANCASTER

HOUSE OF YORK

HOUSE OF TUDOR

STUART LINE

James I .......................................... 1603 Charles I ........................................ 1625

THE COMMONWEALTH

STUART LINE

Charles II ....................................... 1660 James II ......................................... 1685

HOUSE OF ORANGE

William and Mary ................................. 1688

STUART LINE

Anne ............................................. 1702

BRUNSWICK LINE

BEGINNING OF SCOTTISH KINGDOM UNDER KENNETH MACALPINE, AFTER UNION OF PICTS AND SCOTS

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