No doubt the Chancellor was right. It was "the end o' an auld sang." But, after all, the Estates had received "the wages of going on, and still to be." It did not appear so at the first. The Parliament of Great Britain broke more than one pledge solemnly made at the union. The highest boon that King James or Prince Charles could promise to Scotland was the repeal of the union. The Scottish representatives had little weight in the councils of the Empire. Even the faithful Argyll was thwarted, and his service lightly esteemed. The best blood of the country was spilt on foreign battlefields and in alien quarrels. The genius of a Keith served only to lead to victory the troops of Frederick the Great, and to guide the steps of Russia towards Constantinople. Among the exiles, there were others, less fortunate, who found no scope for their talents, and no friends in the land of the stranger. But, as time passed, the tragic element faded out of the story, and, with the rapid growth of prosperity, the influence of Scotland on the destinies of the nation became more apparent. The land of Kennedy and Elphinstone, of Lethington and Carstares, could not fail to produce wise and prudent statesmen, who might find, on a wider stage, the renown that had been denied to those who went before them. The music of the "auld sang" resounded again, although the walls that re-echoed it were those of Westminster. The Imperial Parliament meets close to the ancient Abbey, the guardian of the Stone of Fate, which the first Edward carried in triumph from Scotland, and on which, for nigh three hundred years, descendant after descendant of his enemy has sat. As the old prophecy has not been rendered void by the transference of its subject from Scone to London, so the promise that gave meaning to the last years of the Scottish Parliament has not failed of fulfilment. _Nec tamen consumebatur._ APPENDIX REPRESENTATION IN THE SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT[136]