ABSTRACT
During the Scottish Parliament's debate on the Treaty of Union in 1706 there was anti-Union pamphleteering and substantial opposition to Union in Scottish cities; but on 1 May 1707 the Treaty was made law. For Henry Thomas Buckle, writing his History of Civilization in England in the mid-nineteenth century, Enlightenment had failed to rescue the country from the acrid Presbyterianism of a 'badly fed, badly housed, and not over-cleanly people'. After Union all was auroral promise and progress with eighteenth-century Enlightenment bringing civilization to a society of extreme backwardness, notably in politics, agriculture and, notoriously, religion. If Scotland before and after Union was preternaturally fixated on matters of religion, the only essential rigidity was in the intensity of the involvement. Belief in the personal and social value of vigorous emotional response characterizes the views of tragic pleasure held by the Scottish literati.
