George W. T. Omond

“ And so, to the intense indignation of Fletcher, the old Scottish ‘Estates’ became a thing of the past. It would be difficult to find, in the history of any other country, laws more harsh and sanguinary than the long series of enactments which the Parliament of Scotland had passed for the purpose of suppressing liberty and increasing the power of the Crown. The independent spirit of the English people had constantly been reflected in the independent spirit of the English Parliament. ”

“ On my conscience, he has contrived the whole scheme to no other end than to set his own country on an equal foot with England and the rest of the world.’
Fletcher’s answer was that Scotland, if separated from England, must be involved in constant war; but that if united to England, and at the same time left in possession of the power of self-government, she would be prosperous. ‘This,’ he exclaimed, ‘is the only just and rational kind of Union. All other coalitions are but the unjust subjection of one people to another.’
At this point the conversation ended. ”

“ An incorporating Union, which would abolish the Scottish Parliament, would make Scotland poorer than ever, because Scotsmen would spend more money than ever in England. Members of Parliament would go to London and live there. No Scotsman who wanted public employment would ever set foot in Scotland. Every man who made a fortune in England would buy land there. The trade of Scotland would be nothing more than an inconsiderable retail business in an impoverished country. ”

“ In this Spartan system Fletcher had the fullest confidence. ‘Such a militia,’ he says, ‘might not only defend a people living in an island, but even such as are placed in the midst of the most warlike nations of the world.’ But the practical conclusion to which he comes is that, in the meantime, the existing militia was sufficient. No standing army was necessary. The sea was the only empire which naturally belonged to Britain. Conquest could never be our interest, still less to consume our people and our treasure in crusades undertaken on behalf of other nations. ”

“ But there were not many Englishmen who had the long experience or the calmness of Godolphin. The Scots, it was said, never wanted the will, and now they have the power, to attack us. France will find the money. They themselves will find the men, and their long-suppressed hatred against England will burst forth. Scotland must either be reduced by force of arms, or the militia must be embodied, and Parliament must petition the Queen to see that those gentlemen who allowed the Act of Security to pass may have the honour of defending the borders. ”

“ His great aim, then and ever after, was to reduce the royal authority to a shadow, and to place all real power in the hands of Parliament. ‘He is,’ said Mackay in the paper which he drew up for the use of the Princess Sophia, ‘a zealous assertor of the liberties of the people, and so jealous of the growing power of all Princes, in whom he thinks ambition to be natural, that he is not for intrusting the best of them with a power which they can make use of against the people. ”

“ It is a strange proposition which is usually made in this House, that if we will give money to the Crown, then the Crown will give us good laws; as if we were to buy good laws of the Crown, and pay money to our princes, that they may do their duty, and comply with their coronation oath. And yet this is not the worst, for we have often had promises of good laws, and when we have given the sums demanded, those promises have been broken, and the nation left to seek a remedy—which is not to be found, unless we obtain the laws we want, before we give a supply. ”

“ He went on to expound his theory, which was that London should no longer be the only seat of Government, but that England, Scotland, and Ireland should be joined together in a federal Union. ‘That London,’ he said, ‘should draw the riches and government of the three kingdoms to the south-east corner of this island, is in some degree as unnatural as for one city to possess the riches and government of the world.... I shall add that so many different seats of Government will highly encourage virtue. For all the same offices that belong to a great kingdom must be in each of them ”

“ Scotland is, therefore, unfairly taxed; and for that reason, and also because the militia is sufficient, the Estates should refuse to vote supplies for the army, and devote the money to the improvement of trade and industry.
It is in the Second Discourse that Fletcher gives his well-known account of the poverty-stricken condition of Scotland, and prescribes domestic slavery as one remedy. No one who has minutely studied Scottish history during the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth centuries will think the picture overdrawn. ”

“ Fletcher was so convinced that the expedition to Scotland was useless, that he refused to take a part in it, and said that, if there was to be an invasion, he would accompany Monmouth to England.
He was, nevertheless, as strong against the expedition to England as against that to Scotland; but it appears, from what he afterwards told Burnet, that all the English, except Captain Matthews, were pressing Monmouth to make the venture. The west of England, they told him, would rise to a man, as soon as he appeared. There would be no fighting. Even the King’s Guards would support him. ”

“ The Darien expedition had sailed at the end of July, and Fletcher urges the necessity of providing supplies for the new colony. The whole future of Scotland, he says, depends on the fate of this enterprise. The condition of the country has become desperate. Partly through the fault of Scotsmen themselves, and partly because the seat of government has been removed to London, it is cruelly impoverished, and has fallen so low ‘that now our motto may be inverted, and all may not only provoke, but safely trample upon us.’ Commerce we have none. No use has been made of our harbours. ”

“ Cromartie said he did not think so, and tried to convince Fletcher that free commerce with England, and the right of trading to the Colonies, would be an immense boon to Scotland.
‘For my part,’ exclaimed Fletcher, ‘I cannot see what advantages a free trade to the English plantations would bring us, except a further exhausting of our [Pg 90] people, and the utter ruin of all our merchants, who should vainly pretend to carry that trade from the English.’
Then he said that the Scots had a further grievance against England. ”

“ It was probably about this time, or soon after, that the project of forming the ‘Company of Scotland trading to Africa and the Indies’ first took shape in the fertile brain of William Paterson, who may perhaps have met Fletcher in Holland before the Revolution. He was in London in 1690; and Dalrymple says that in Scotland it was always believed that Fletcher brought him down to Saltoun, and presented him to the Marquis of Tweeddale, to whom Paterson unfolded the great scheme. ”

“ There was seldom any debating, and sometimes more than one hundred Acts of Parliament were passed, and received the royal assent, in one day. There was thus a constant danger of hasty legislation, and for this there was no remedy. In England the Lords could reject any measure passed by the Commons, and the Commons could reject any measure passed by the Lords. But in Scotland, where there was only one chamber, there was nothing to prevent the Estates making any law, however rash or ill-considered, in the space of a single day. ”

“ To be found unarmed, in the event of her Majesty’s death, would be to have no manner of security for our liberty, property, or the independence of this kingdom.... If we do not provide for arming the kingdom in such an exigency, we shall become a jest and a proverb to the world.’ The Government divided the House against this clause, but were beaten, and it was added to the Act. ”

“ By the Act of Security they could choose a King for themselves, and they could arm the whole nation; and who could tell what dangers might not be in store for England if, on the death of the Queen, with France to help them, and with a King of their own, they chose to make war. ”

“ The one nation was rich, the other was poor. In what proportions were they to contribute to the common treasury? Each had a public debt; but the debt of England was far heavier than the [Pg 129] debt of Scotland; and some equitable adjustment of the national liabilities must be arranged. Each nation had its own laws. Were these to be assimilated, or left unchanged? What was to be the form of that one Parliament, on which the responsibility of enacting laws for the United Kingdom was now to be devolved? Was there to be one executive for England, and another for Scotland? ”

“ Fletcher’s last piece of business in the Scottish Parliament was to move, ‘That no peer, nor the eldest son of any peer, can be chosen to represent either shire or burgh of this part of the United Kingdom in the House of Commons.’ This motion was rejected, by a majority of thirteen, in favour of an amendment providing that the elections for counties and burghs in Scotland should continue, as regards those who were capable of electing or being elected, on the same footing as before the Union. ”

“ It is composed of men whose trade is war. To support them heavy taxes must be imposed; and it thus becomes the interest of a large and formidable party in the state, consisting of those families whose kinsmen are soldiers, to keep up the army at the expense of their countrymen.
No standing armies, Fletcher points out, have ever yet been allowed in this island. The Parliament of England has often declared them contrary to law; and the Parliament of Scotland not only declared them to be a grievance, but made his keeping of them up one of its reasons for disowning King James. ”

“ In London, too, the people were as disaffected as in the west. The King would not dare to send troops out of the capital; and so there would be time to raise such an army for the Protestant cause that he would be able to fight the King on equal terms. Monmouth was a soldier, and therefore knew that a force newly enlisted, and hastily organised, would have no chance against well-drilled troops. In the discussions, Fletcher and Matthews alone seemed to have agreed with Monmouth—Lord Grey, Ferguson, Wade, and Dare all clamouring for action. ”

“ The harmless beggars should be employed as domestic slaves. The dangerous ruffians should be sent to Venice, to ‘serve in the galleys against the common enemy of Christendom.’
Such were the means by which Fletcher would have put an end to idleness and mendicancy in Scotland; and his well-known description of the state of things may be once more quoted, as an explanation of how he came to hold such views. ‘In all times there have been about a hundred thousand of those vagabonds who have lived without any regard or subjection to the laws of the land, or even those of God and nature.... ”

“ Nothing has been done for the poor. Every year people are emigrating in search of work. We have no trade and no manufactures. Everything depends on the colony at Darien. Therefore the first business of Parliament should be to support the Company of Scotland, for which he proposes that the Estates should vote a large sum of money, and that three frigates which had lately been built by Scotland should be employed to convoy the next fleet that sailed for Darien.
He hopes that, after providing for the Darien colonists, the Scottish Parliament will take steps to encourage trade at home. ”

“ But, on the other hand, every free man should have arms, which are ‘the only true badge of liberty.’ Military service ought to be compulsory upon all classes; for ‘no bodies of military men can be of any force or value unless many persons of quality or education be among them.’ The only men who are fit to be officers are gentlemen of property and position.
He has a plan all ready for organising the national [Pg 51] militia. Four camps should be formed, three in England and one in Scotland. ”

“ On the other hand, the speech of Belhaven, full of predictions, every one of which time has falsified, was eagerly received, was read by thousands, and is still to be found, in more than one reprint, in every private library in Scotland. Belhaven was a great actor; but it is one thing to gain applause, and another thing to gain votes. Burke producing a dagger on the floor of the House of Commons, Brougham kneeling on the woolsack, are examples, in more recent times, of how little impression is produced by the display of dramatic powers ”

“ By this limitation our Parliament will become the most uncorrupted senate of all Europe. No man will be tempted to vote against the interest of his country, when his country shall have all the bribes in our own hands: offices, places, pensions.... If, therefore, either reason, honour, or conscience have any influence upon us; if we have any regard either to ourselves or posterity ”

“ The situation was that England was now shut up to these alternatives:—either, on the death of Anne, she must make war on [Pg 103] Scotland, conquer the country, and hold it by force of arms, without any attempt at constitutional government; or she must allow a separate King to sit on the Scottish throne; or she must consent to an Union, and at last submit to give Scotland an equal share in English trade. Godolphin saw this. So did Somers and Halifax. Everything depended on the course taken by the English Parliament. ”

“ In the editions of Fletcher’s collected works there is an ‘Auviso,’ or advertisement, prefixed to this pamphlet, in which the author explains that he has written the discourse in order to show how easily any prince who succeeds to the throne of Spain may acquire the empire of the world; and in the Speech upon the State of the Nation, he deals with the same topic. The letter of the Treaty, he urges, speaks of keeping the peace of Europe by breaking up the Spanish monarchy, but the spirit of it throws that monarchy into the hands of the Bourbons. ”