The Jac obite movement in Scotland was, by this time, moribund, but it was galvanized into activity by the ambition of the young Prince Charles Edward to recover the throne which his grandfather had lost. Walpole had always believed that the exiled house would make another attempt, and this belief had been one of his reasons for maintaining a policy of peace. After his fall, the existence of hostile relations with Spain and France afforded an opportunity for which Jacobite exiles had been watching. The French Gov ernment assembled troops for an invasion of Scotland in
but a storm destroyed their transports, and, in July 1745, Charles Edward was allowed to try his fortune without any French aid except a small quantity of munitions. The adventure was in spired by exiles and there was no enthusiasm for it in Scotland; Charles had to persuade even the Highland chiefs to join him, and he was not always successful. The troops he commanded were never so numerous as the army which Mar had collected 3o years before. The charm and daring of the young prince, and the ab sence of Government troops on the Continent, produced, how ever, a much more dangerous and a much more dramatic result than that of "the 'Fifteen." The commander-in-chief in Scotland, Sir John Cope, instead of guarding Edinburgh, marched to intercept the prince and his Highlanders, but, probably wisely, refused a chance of giving him battle, and the Jacobite force made its way to Edinburgh. On Sept. 17, Charles, as prince regent of the three Kingdoms, took up his quarters in Holyrood. Cope, having marched to Inver ness and thence to Aberdeen, took ship to Dunbar, disembarked his troops and was immediately defeated at Prestonpans (Sept. 21). The prince expected this success to be followed by a large adhesion of followers, but he waited in vain at Edinburgh for the expected recruits. Then, deciding to attempt a march upon Lon don, he crossed the Border on Nov. 9, hoping to be joined by the Lancashire Jacobites. His expectation was again disappointed, but he continued his southward march as far as Derby (Dec. 4). By that time troops had been recalled from the Continent, the duke of Cumberland was at Lichfield with one army, and Marshal Wade commanded another in the north of England. Charles had reluctantly to accept the opinion of his officers that a further advance was useless, and the retreat began on Dec. 7. The Jacobites marched by Carlisle and Dumfries to Glasgow, and thence to Stirling, where they besieged the castle. On Jan. 17, 1746, the prince attacked a relieving force under Gen. Hawley at Falkirk and won his second and last victory. The state of feeling in the Lowlands rendered a further retreat inevitable, and Charles, having taken Inverness and Fort Augustus, indulged in hopes of help from France. It did not come, and on April 17 Cumberland destroyed the Jacobite army on Culloden Moor. The prince, after many adventurous wanderings, escaped to France in September. The ferocity with which Cumberland treated the prisoners gained him his nickname of the Butcher. The Government had been des perately alarmed, and less mercy was shown than in 1716. About 8o Jacobites were executed, and the Highlanders were forbidden to carry arms, to wear their distinctive dress, or to play the bag pipes; the prohibition of the kilt was maintained until 1782. The part played by the Episcopalians of the north-east in the rising led to acts which punished with transportation for life any Episcopal clergyman who did not pray in express words for King George, denied protection under the Toleration Act of Queen Anne to clergy ordained by Scottish bishops, and subjected to fine and imprisonment laymen who attended services held by such clergy. This attempt to restrict toleration to Scottish Episcopalians who were members of the Church of England was not abandoned until 1792.
The results of the suppression of the "'Forty-five" were, how ever, not all evil. The abolition of hereditary jurisdictions in 1747 was a reform long overdue, for the administration of justice by magistrates whose tenure of office was not dependent upon the central government was incompatible with good administra tion. The owners of the hereditary jurisdictions received corn
pensation, and many of them used the money to effect great im provements in agriculture. The period marks a new era in the history of Scottish farming. A few years later, William Pitt tried the successful experiment of raising two regiments of Scottish Highlanders for the army. This device had been suggested to Walpole by Duncan Forbes of Culloden, a statesman whose influ ence afterwards prevented some of the clans from joining Prince Charles, and Walpole had recognized its wisdom, but had been prevented from acting upon it by parliamentary dislike to an increase of the standing army.
During the reign of George III. the history of Scotland merges in that of the United Kingdom, in the politics of which Scotland began to take a prominent part, and only a few points need be mentioned. It was a disgrace to the country that, in the second half of the 18th century, servile conditions still existed in coal-mines and salt-pits. The old feudal serfdom had died out earlier in Scotland than in England, and a judicial decision in 1775 had declared that a slave brought to Scotland was thereby emancipated, but, in spite of this, workers in coal-mines and salt-pits remained under ancient obligations scarcely distinguishable from serfdom. Having once entered a mine, at however early an age, a miner was bound to remain at work there to the end of his life, and his services were sold along with the mine in which he worked. Henry Dundas, who was the actual, though not the official, minister for Scotland almost con tinuously from 1775 to 18oi, abolished this evil system by acts passed in 1775 and 1799. His period of rule witnessed a large ex tension of Scottish commerce, in spite of a check to the pros perity of the rapidly growing city of Glasgow through the Amer ican War and the repudiation of American debts to Great Britain after the Declaration of Independence. The Forth and Clyde canal was begun in 1768 and other canals, roads and bridges were constructed in various parts of the country. The outbreak of the French Revolution, which soon put an end to the short period of peace that followed the American War, at first created consid erable sympathy in Scotland, but, as the violence of the revolu tionaries progressed, the sympathy became confined to the Socie ties of the Friends of the People, which, like similar Societies in England, began to demand universal suffrage and annual parlia ments. A convention of delegates from these societies, held at Edinburgh in Dec. 1792, was followed by the trial of Thomas Muir for sedition. The development of events in France brought about a panic, and it is admitted that Muir did not have a fair trial ; he was sentenced to transportation for 14 years. A similar convention in the following year was believed to contemplate inviting foreign troops into the country and was suppressed by the authorities, but the seditious element among the Friends of the People was very much smaller than the Government imag ined. Most of them were constitutional reformers who advocated changes which had received considerable support before the mas sacres in France created a general aversion to any alteration in the constitution. The fear of sedition, fed by the activities of a small number of extremists, continued throughout the first years of the Great French War, and volunteers were enlisted in
for the preservation of order at home as well as for defence. The most important political event which affected Scotland during the war was the impeachment of Henry Dundas, Lord Melville, in 1805. He was acquitted in the following year, but his prosecu tion introduced into Scottish politics an intense bitterness, illus trations of which may be found in Lockhart's Life of Sir Walter Scott.