Other disturbances began in a resolution of the House of Commons, at the
end of 1724, _not_ to impose a Malt Tax equal to that of England (this
had been successfully resisted in 1713), but to levy an additional
sixpence on every barrel of ale, and to remove the bounties on exported
grain. At the Union Scotland had, for the time, been exempted from the
Malt Tax, specially devised to meet the expenses of the French war of
that date. Now, in 1724-1725, Scotland was up in arms to resist the
attempt "to rob a poor man of his beer." But Walpole could put force on
the Scottish Members of Parliament,--"a parcel of low people that could
not subsist," says Lockhart, "without their board wages." Walpole
threatened to withdraw the ten guineas hitherto paid weekly by Government
to those legislators. He offered to drop the sixpence on beer and put
threepence on every bushel of malt, a half of the English tax. On June
23, 1725, the tax was to be exacted. The consequence was an attack on
the military by the mob of Glasgow, who wrecked the house of their Member
in Parliament, Campbell of Shawfield. Some of the assailants were shot:
General Wade and the Lord Advocate, Forbes of Culloden, marched a force
on Glasgow, the magistrates of the town were imprisoned but released on
bail, while in Edinburgh the master brewers, ordered by the Court of
Session to raise the price of their ale, struck for a week; some were
imprisoned, others were threatened or cajoled and deserted their Union.
The one result was that the chief of the Squadrone, the Duke of Roxburgh,
lost his Secretaryship for Scotland, and Argyll's brother, Islay, with
the resolute Forbes of Culloden, became practically the governors of the
country. The Secretaryship, indeed, was for a time abolished, but Islay
practically wielded the power that had so long been in the hands of the
Secretary as agent of the Court.
THE HIGHLANDS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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