And so, to the intense indignation of Fletcher, the old Scottish ‘Estates’ became a thing of the past. It would be difficult to find, in the history of any other country, laws more harsh and sanguinary than the long series of enactments which the Parliament of Scotland had passed for the purpose of suppressing liberty and increasing the power of the Crown. The independent spirit of the English people had constantly been reflected in the independent spirit of the English Parliament. The Scottish Parliament had been, before the Revolution, submissive to tyranny, because it did not fairly represent the people, and because of the defects which were engrained in its constitution. It had been a Parliament of which the only function, except on a few memorable occasions, was to pass, almost in silence, the laws which had been prepared by the King’s servants. It sat for only a few days in each session, and free debate was almost unknown. The franchise by which the county and burgh members were elected was always in the hands of a few persons; and latterly, although a majority of the Scottish people were Presbyterians, no one who was not an Episcopalian could be either an elector or a member. The savage laws, therefore, which were passed, and which have frequently been quoted for the purpose of proving the slavish spirit of the Estates, were just the laws which, in an age of violence, might be expected to proceed from a legislature which represented only a tyrannical minority in the country. There were, indeed, times when the Scottish Parliament threw off the yoke. In the reign of Charles the First it extorted from the weakness of the King concessions which would never have been obtained by an appeal to his clemency; and in the reign of James the Second even the Lords of the Articles refused to act any longer as the blind tools of despotic power. The occasions, however, on which the Estates resisted the royal authority had been few. There is, nevertheless, a brighter side to the picture; for the Scottish statute law relating to private rights was equal, if not superior, to anything which the English Parliament had produced at the close of the seventeenth century. Wonder has often been expressed at the marvellously concise language of the Scottish Acts of Parliament. But the explanation is very simple. Each statute was the work of one or two thoroughly trained lawyers, who knew exactly what they wished to say, and whose productions were not afterwards subjected to the unskilled criticism of a large assembly.