After the conclusion of the war, Scotland shared in the discontent of the troubled years 1815-20, and the name of the "Radical War" has been given to a series of political riots in Paisley, Glasgow and Greenock in 1819-20; the Govern ment again over-estimated the danger of an outburst which was closely related to unemployment and agricultural distress. In the reign of George IV. (whose visit to Edinburgh in 1822 was the first state visit of a sovereign to Scotland since the time of Charles I.) the discontent passed into a constitutional agitation for parliamentary reform. The representation of Scotland in the British parliament had been settled in 1707 on the lines of the then existing system. The country electorate was so small that, in 1822, when the population of Scotland was nearly 2,100,00o, the total number of county voters was under 3,000. The burgh members were returned by the town councils, themselves self elected bodies. The Reform Act of 1832, which added eight to the number of Scottish members, extended the franchise in the counties to owners of lands or houses of the yearly value of IIo and to certain classes of tenants. In the burghs a vote was given to occupiers of houses valued at L io a year. Further extensions were made, as in England, by the Reform Acts of 1867-68 and 1884-85. The change made by the act of 1832 is illustrated by the circumstance that Scotland, which in 1831 returned 24 Re formers and 21 anti-Reformers, sent to the first Reformed par liament 41 Whigs and 12 Tories. That parliament passed in 1833 a Scottish Burgh Act which swept away the old corrupt burghal constitutions, against which Reformers had been waging war for nearly half a century, and restored to the citizens a long-lost right of electing their own municipal rulers.
The middle of the 19th century was marked by a great ecclesiastical struggle, culminating in 1843 in the disrup tion of the Church of Scotland and the foundation of the Free Church. After 57 years of separate existence it united in 1900 with the United Presbyterian Church, itself an amalgamation of small churches which had seceded from the Church of Scotland, frequently on some dispute connected with lay patronage, an in stitution which troubled Scotland from the passage of the Patron age Act of 1712 until the repeal of that act in 1874. A minority of the Free Church disapproved of the Union of 1900, and their claim to retain the property of the church was upheld, on appeal, by the House of Lords in 1904. The obviously inequitable char acter of the legal decision led to the appointment of a royal com mission to allocate the property between the Free Church and the United Free Church, and its recommendations were embodied in an act of parliament in 1905 (see SCOTLAND, CHURCH OF).
A movement for a still wider union of the Presbyterian Churches in Scotland began about 1912. Negotiations between the Church of Scotland and the United Free Church were inter rupted by the World War, and, after their resumption, the Church of Scotland obtained in 1921 an act of parliament the effect of which was to transform the relations of the Established Church with the State and to give the church liberty both "to adjudicate finally in all matters of doctrine, worship, government and dis cipline," and to interpret and modify (within the limits of Trini tarian Protestantism) the Articles of the Constitution, which were scheduled in
act. This legislation removed the historical diffi culties which, in conjunction with patronage, had led to the dis ruption of 1843, but it was felt that the system of endowment also required readjustment, after the lapse of nearly three cen turies since it was settled by Charles I. This object was effected
by the Church of Scotland (Property and Endowments) Act of 1925, and a body of Scottish Ecclesiastical Commissioners was appointed to give effect to a number of its provisions, including the transfer of endowments to general trustees of the Church. The two acts of 1921 and 1925 were promoted by the Church of Scotland avowedly for the purpose of removing "the main causes keeping the two Churches apart," and, while the act of 1925 was passing through its last stages in parliament, the general assembly of the United Free Church passed, by a majority, a resolution recognizing the progress achieved in this direction. The General Assemblies, both of the Church of Scotland and of the United Free Church, in 1928 gave definite approval to the basis of a scheme for union, to be constituted in 1929 or 1930.
Two years after the disruption, a Poor Law was introduced into Scotland. Up to 1845, the relief of the poor had been entirely in the hands of the Kirk Sessions of the various parishes, which possessed, but seldom used, powers of local taxation for the purpose. Social and economic develop ments, as well as the ecclesiastical separation produced by the disruption, necessitated a change in the traditional methods, and a Poor Law (Scotland) Act was passed in 1845. It followed in many respects the English Act of 1834 and established parochial boards under a central Board of Supervision, but it did not im pose the English workhouse test, though it forbade relief to able bodied poor. A Compulsory Education Act followed in 1872. Acts of the Scottish parliament had long ago ordered the pro vision of a school in every parish, but at the beginning of the 19th century this requirement had not been universally fulfilled, though educational facilities were better than in England. There was a considerable advance in the early 19th century, and from 1833 Scotland received a parliamentary grant for education. It was entrusted to the church, which remained in control of the schools; the Free Church, after 1843, established schools of its own. Church control was diminished by more direct Government supervision in 1861, and, after the act of 1872 was passed, the Presbyterian churches gave up their schools to the newly estab lished School Boards. The Scottish Episcopal Church and the Roman Catholic Church retained voluntary schools until the Edu cation Act of 1919 replaced. the School Boards by education authorities elected over a wider area and made provision for the transfer of voluntary schools. The teachers in such transferred schools are, in accordance with the act, appointed by the local authority after being approved, as regards character and religious belief, by the denomination concerned. Electors to education au thorities are persons registered as local government electors, and voting is conducted on the principle of proportional representa tion. Education authorities are empowered to expend money on the provision of food and books for children, and also to give assistance to qualified persons attending a university or training college. This last provision has been followed by a large increase in the number of students at the Scottish universities. The act contemplated an extension of the compulsory school age to 15 years and an elaborate system of continuation schools, but its provisions have only been partially carried out.