Fletcher of Saltoun

by George W. T. Omond

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.

This Discourse on Militias, which was first printed in 1698, in the form of a pamphlet, will be found in the various editions of his Works published in 1732, 1737, 1749, and 1798, and was also reprinted in London in the year 1755.[3]

[3] MS. Bibliography. By Mr. Gordon Duff and Mr. R. A. S. Macfie.

It appears, from internal evidence, that the Two Discourses concerning the Affairs of Scotland were written in the autumn of 1698. 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. 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. The war is at an end. In that war Scotland has done great things. Seven or eight thousand Scotsmen served in the English fleet, and two or three thousand in that of Holland. ‘Besides,’ he says, ‘I am credibly informed that every fifth man in the English forces was either of this nation, or Scots-Irish, who are a people of the same blood with us.’ But there is now no reason for keeping up the standing forces in Scotland. ‘There is no pretence for them, except only to keep a few wretched Highlanders in order, which might easily be done by a due execution of our old laws made for that purpose, without the help of any fort or garrison.’ As to danger from the Jacobites, ‘the party of the late King James was always insignificant, and is now become a jest.’ Scotland is called upon to provide £84,000 a year for the army. This is the same thing as if England had to find £2,500,000; and yet all England provides is £350,000. 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. The country was barren, and the seasons were inclement. But Fletcher thought of Holland, where he had seen field upon field rescued from the sea, harbours and ships, wealthy towns, flourishing farmers, canals running between rich pasturelands, or banks adorned by villas and gardens; and all this had been the work of the sober and industrious people of a free republic, who had worked out their own salvation. Then he looked at Scotland, the country which he loved, and saw ‘many thousands of our people who are at this day dying for want of bread,’ and asked, ‘How is this to be changed?’ He was under no illusions. He saw things as they really were. The Trading Company might do much. If the Parliament would spend money on the encouragement of industry instead of on the army, Glasgow and Dundee might rise from petty seaports into rich commercial cities, and agriculture might flourish in the Lothians. But a great part of the population of Scotland consisted of people who would do anything rather than work. These were the descendants of the Border mosstroopers, the wild clansmen of the Highlands, and a vast migratory horde of sturdy beggars who wandered, in ragged hordes, over Lowlands and Highlands alike—starving, pilfering, and incorrigibly idle. ‘How,’ he asked, ‘are we to deal with these vagabonds?’ His answer was, ‘Force them to work.’ He foresees that he will be accused of inconsistency, and must face the question how he, the champion of liberty, can propose such a measure. But he answers that he regards not names but things. ‘We are told,’ he says, ‘there is not a slave in France; that when a slave sets his foot upon French ground, he becomes immediately free; and I say there is not a freeman in France, because the King takes away part of any man’s property at his pleasure; and that, let him do what he will to any man, there is no remedy.’ Public liberty may be complete in a country where there is domestic slavery, and he only proposes that the idle, sturdy beggar should be made a slave for the benefit of the country at large.

That Fletcher was favourable to domestic slavery, as a social institution, is clear. He argues that the clergy are to blame for the ‘multitude of beggars who now oppress the world.’ His view is that churchmen, ‘never failing to confound things spiritual with temporal, and consequently all good order and good government, either through mistake or design,’ recommended masters, when Christianity was established, to set at liberty such of their slaves as would become Christians; and the result of this advice was that thousands of persons, who had been well clothed, well fed, and well housed as slaves, were thrown loose upon the world, which has ever since been overrun by a ragged army of idle freemen who live on alms.

He therefore urges that in Scotland stern measures should be taken, especially with the Highlanders, for whom he has a profound contempt. ‘Nor indeed,’ he says, ‘can there be any thorough reformation in this affair, so long as the one-half of our country, in extent of ground, is possessed by a people who are all gentlemen only because they will not work, and who in everything are more contemptible than the vilest slaves, except that they always carry arms, because for the most part they live upon robbery.’ His proposals are that hospitals should be provided for such beggars as are old and feeble; but as for the rest, he would divide them into two classes. 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.... Many murders have been discovered among them, and they are not only a most unspeakable oppression to poor tenants (who, if they give not bread or some kind of provision to perhaps forty such villains in one day, are sure to be insulted by them), but they rob many poor people who live in houses distant from any neighbourhood. At country weddings, markets, burials, and other the like occasions, they are to be seen—both men and women—perpetually drunk, cursing, blaspheming, and fighting together.’

Apart from this evil of a large pauper population, for which he had the courage to propose the remedy of slavery, Fletcher thought that much of the poverty in Scotland was caused by high rents. These, he says, are so excessive that they make ‘the tenant even poorer than his servant, whose wages he cannot pay,’ and this affects not only the day labourer, but the village tradesmen, and the merchants of the county towns. Rents must therefore be reduced; and not only so, but an Act of Parliament should be passed, forbidding any man to possess more land than he can cultivate by his own servants. By this means more labour would be employed, the soil would be better cultivated, and the wealth of the country vastly increased. ‘In a few years,’ says Fletcher, ‘the country will be everywhere enclosed and improved to the greatest height, the plough being everywhere in the hand of the possessor.’