Dear Alastair
I now understand. The
figure comes from p. 328 of R. Thorne The History of Parliament: the
House of Commons 1790-1820 , volume 1, and can be found on this page
of the website:
http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1790-1820/survey/iii-members
Since the page is
rather long, I’ve attached the text below.
The author will
simply have been through all of the Members covered in our volumes
for 1790-1820 and counted up the Scottish ones.
Best wishes
Paul
Scotsmen sitting for
non-Scottish seats numbered over 130, noticeably more than the
Irish. With 45 seats in Scotland almost monopolized by themselves,
the Scots still needed more scope. The eldest sons of Scottish
peers, who were not eligible to be created peers of Great Britain
until 1782, could not sit for seats in Scotland, and they are among
the number. In addition, some Scottish peerage families had English
or Welsh interests—notably the Butes. Apart from them, the Campbells,
created Lords Cawdor, had Welsh interests. The Johnstone family
interest at Weymouth brought in Scots Members; the Dundas interest
in Yorkshire introduced members of the family. But, by and large,
far more Scots than Irish might properly be termed adventurers:
their own country could not support them. Many of them were
nabobs—John Agnew, John Alexander Bannerman, Sir George Dallas,
Philip Dundas, John Fleming, Charles Forbes, Joseph Hume, Sir John
Macpherson, James Paull, Sir William Paxton, John and William
Petrie, Patrick Ross, George Simson, James Charles Stuart Strange
and Henry Trail come to mind. This was no coincidence: the East
India patronage bestowed on his countrymen by Henry Dundas was at
work. Apart from dominating Scottish elections, he also occasionally
returned Scots for vacant English seats in which he was able to
exert ministerial influence, and Scottish Whigs were more or less
driven out of their country by him to look for seats elsewhere. Only
23 of all these Members ever sat for Scottish constituencies: the
rest crept into every corner of the land for their seats. They were
more likely than the Irish to be of mercantile background—London
Scottish merchants were often ambitious of a seat in Parliament.
