Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"Although the two countries had shared the same Monarch since 1603 when James VI of Scotland succeeded Elizabeth I of England to become James I, England and Scotland remain separate states. . . . . Scottish motives were rather more venal. Scottish investors had lost heavily in the Darien scheme--a grossly mismanaged bid to found a Scot's colony in Central America--and compensation for their considerable losses was one provision of the act. . . . Despite a remaining degree of bitterness caused by the failed Scottish Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745 to 1746, by the nineteenth century increasing prosperity had reconciled most of Scotland to the union." [1001 Days]