There can be little doubt that this remedy was the Union. But there were not many Englishmen who had the long experience or the calmness of Godolphin. The Scots, it was said, never wanted the will, and now they have the power, to attack us. France will find the money. They themselves will find the men, and their long-suppressed hatred against England will burst forth. Scotland must either be reduced by force of arms, or the militia must be embodied, and Parliament must petition the Queen to see that those gentlemen who allowed the Act of Security to pass may have the honour of defending the borders. By their policy they have undone the Union, such as it is, which has existed since the death of Elizabeth, and have separated the countries. On them, therefore, the danger should fall. Much that was very foolish and very false was said and written; but even to the coolest heads in England the peril seemed great, not on account of any immediate danger from the army in Scotland, but on account of the state of the Succession question. The situation was that England was now shut up to these alternatives:--either, on the death of Anne, she must make war on Scotland, conquer the country, and hold it by force of arms, without any attempt at constitutional government; or she must allow a separate King to sit on the Scottish throne; or she must consent to an Union, and at last submit to give Scotland an equal share in English trade. Godolphin saw this. So did Somers and Halifax. Everything depended on the course taken by the English Parliament. The English Parliament met on the 25th of October 1704; and what followed is in marked contrast to the irregular proceedings of the Scottish Estates. The strife of parties was as keen in London as in Edinburgh. The factions were as violent; but the proceedings at Westminster were regular and orderly. Speed there was; but everything was done with that punctilious attention to forms which makes the resolutions of the English Parliament, by whatever angry passions the members may be influenced, so doubly weighty, not only because they are the decisions of the representatives of a great and powerful nation, but because they are framed, revised, and adopted in such an orderly method, that to read the journals of the Lords and Commons (a vast mine of constitutional law, which is too much neglected) gives the student of our history an impressive idea of strength and durability.