However popular an Union might have been among the Scottish merchants, it would have been most unpopular in England. The English merchants, who had exulted in the failure of the Commission on Trade, were up in arms against the idea of giving to Scotland the privileges which she would have secured by the Union; and the majority of Englishmen still hated and despised the very name of Scotland. This hatred and contempt of the neighbour country, an inheritance from the long years of international warfare, found vent in abusive descriptions of Scotland and the Scottish people, which were circulated all over the island, causing laughter in England and rousing bitter indignation beyond the Tweed. “The country,” says one writer, “is full of lakes and loughs, and they are well stocked with islands; so that a map thereof looks like a pillory coat bespattered all over with dirt and rotten eggs, some pieces of the shells floating here and there representing the islands.” The towns of Scotland were briefly described as poor and populous, especially Edinburgh, which resembled its inhabitants in “being high and dirty.” It was compared to a double comb, an article which Scotsmen did not often use, having one great street, with a number of alleys branching from it, which might be mistaken for common sewers. As to the Scottish women, “the meaner sort go barefoot and bareheaded, with two black elf-locks on either side their faces; some of them have scarce any clothes at all, some part of their bed-clothes pinned about their shoulders, and their children have nothing else on them but a little blanket. Those women that can purchase plaids need not bestow much upon other clothes, these cover-sluts being sufficient. Those of the best sort, that are very well habited in their modish silks, yet must wear a plaid over all for the credit of their country.” The English language could scarcely furnish language violent enough for the purpose of describing the Scots: “The people are proud, arrogant, vain-glorious boasters, bloody, barbarous, and inhuman butchers. Cozenage and theft are in perfection among them, and they are perfect English-haters. They show their pride in exalting themselves and depressing their neighbours. When the palace at Edinburgh is finished they expect his Majesty will leave his rotten house at Whitehall, and live splendidly among his own countrymen, the Scots, for they say that Englishmen are much beholden to them that we have their king amongst us.”[102]