Although bound to its big neighbor under the Act of Union of 1707, Scotland has remained a very separate place. The resignation of Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has focused attention on the perennial issue of Scottish independence. The great argument against Scottish independence has always been economic — to say nothing of the difficulty of duplicating Hadrian’s Wall. Nonetheless, the last block payment from the United Kingdom to Scotland was a hefty $41 billion, emphasizing Scotland’s economic dependence on the union exchequer. Scotland may be legally and commercially tied to England, but it is brave, bountiful and profoundly different in its ways.
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