about together. Some measures, however, had to be taken to prevent them,
not from cutting each other's throats, which would have suited the
Government well enough, but from stirring up a religious war, which they
would inevitably have done if left to the free enjoyment of their own
humours. It was necessary so to strengthen the hands of one of the two
parties that the other should be compelled to refrain at least from open
hostilities. The Resolutioners, as the most tolerant and the
mildest-mannered, would have been those Cromwell would have preferred to
see in the ascendency. But the Resolutioners had acknowledged Charles,
and were, after their own fashion, in favour of the royal title. The
Remonstrants were accordingly preferred. They, indeed, denied the
authority of the Commonwealth over spiritual matters, but they also
denied the authority of Charles; and it was felt that at such a crisis
the civil allegiance was of more value than the religious. A law was
accordingly established dividing Scotland into five districts, in each
of which certain members of the Remonstrant clergy were empowered to
ordain ministers, as it were, to the exercise of their functions. At the
same time it was not the object of Cromwell to exalt one party at the
expense of the other so much as to strike a balance between the two; and
in doing this he was much served by the tact and good sense of James
Sharp, whose name now first begins to be heard in Scottish history. He
was on the side of the Resolutioners, but he so managed matters as to be
favourably regarded by the Government as a person likely to be of
service to them in the event of any open disruption between the two
bodies, without losing the confidence of his own party. The Court of
Session was the next to go, and in its place rose the Commission of
Justice, of which James Dalrymple, afterwards Lord Stair, the first
Scottish lawyer of his day, was the most conspicuous member. In 1654 the
Act for incorporating the Union between England and Scotland was passed
by the Commonwealth. With that Commonwealth disappeared the Union, but