From the 1750s, after more than a century of intense political and religious disputes and of economic stagnation, Scotland began to enjoy several decades of almost unprecedented political stability, religious harmony, economic growth and cultural achievements. Jacobitism had been crushed and most propertied and influential Scots rallied to the Hanoverian cause and praised the benefits of the British constitution. The political elite in Scotland were more reconciled to the Union with England; Scotland was a 'semi-independent' nation that had only limited representation at Westminster, but which retained its own major institutions in the church, law and education, and which was largely administered and governed internally by the Scottish propertied elite. The landed classes in Scotland had learned how to limit English interference in Scottish affairs, to profit from the career and patronage opportunities created by the expanding British empire, and to exert considerable control over their less wealthy fellow-Scots. A narrow landed oligarchy dominated Scottish politics. Religious divisions still existed in Scotland, but they were more muted than at any period since the Reformation and the more tolerant 'Moderates' dominated the Church of Scotland and sought to play down disputes over theology, doctrines and church organisation. The Scottish economy was in the process of quite