Unsustainable debt led Scotland into Treaty of Union
This admittedly simplified analysis is based on 50-odd years’ work on the Scottish Exchequer records up to and since my retirement from the Scottish Record Office. My own conclusion is that by 1707 the burden of public debt was unsustainable and, whatever view one takes of the Treaty of Union, it did allow the debt to be cleared off, a much needed re-coinage carried out, and Scotland’s financial administration to be put on a proper, if far from ideal, footing. A “parcel of rogues” may indeed have profited, but there were others who saw the Union as the way forward, and some who accepted it was their best chance of getting money due to them. How far any of this is relevant to Scotland in 2014, your readers will no doubt decide for themselves.
Dr Athol L Murray, Edinburgh