[19] The author of the History of Modern Europe, in a series of Letters from a Nobleman to his Son, who tells this story, says, ‘This anecdote the author had from the late Patrick, Lord Elibank.’
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. The Scottish Parliament had been, before the Revolution, submissive to tyranny, because it did not fairly represent the people, and because of the defects which were engrained in its constitution. It had been a Parliament of which the only function, except on a few memorable occasions, was to pass, almost in silence, the laws which had been prepared by the King’s servants. It sat for only a few days in each session, and free debate was almost unknown. The franchise by which the county and burgh members were elected was always in the hands of a few persons; and latterly, although a majority of the Scottish people were Presbyterians, no one who was not an Episcopalian could be either an elector or a member. The savage laws, therefore, which were passed, and which have frequently been quoted for the purpose of proving the slavish spirit of the Estates, were just the laws which, in an age of violence, might be expected to proceed from a legislature which represented only a tyrannical minority in the country. There were, indeed, times when the Scottish Parliament threw off the yoke. In the reign of Charles the First it extorted from the weakness of the King concessions which would never have been obtained by an appeal to his clemency; and in the reign of James the Second even the Lords of the Articles refused to act any longer as the blind tools of despotic power. The occasions, however, on which the Estates resisted the royal authority had been few. There is, nevertheless, a brighter side to the picture; for the Scottish statute law relating to private rights was equal, if not superior, to anything which the English Parliament had produced at the close of the seventeenth century. Wonder has often been expressed at the marvellously concise language of the Scottish Acts of Parliament. But the explanation is very simple. Each statute was the work of one or two thoroughly trained lawyers, who knew exactly what they wished to say, and whose productions were not afterwards subjected to the unskilled criticism of a large assembly.
It is curious to remember that this admirable system of laws was the handiwork of the very men who were foremost in the business of suppressing the liberties of the nation. The period between the Restoration and the Revolution, every page of whose history is stained by crimes perpetrated under the sanction of the law, was the Augustan age of Scottish jurisprudence; and the rolls of the Scottish Parliament during these years are full of statutes, dealing with almost every department of the law, and containing provisions which conferred real benefits on all classes of the people.
Apart, then, from those laws which were destructive of public liberty, the Scottish Parliament had done good work for Scotland even under the Stuarts. It was now free; and what Fletcher resented was not the Union with England, by which Scotland gained a great deal, but the destruction of the Scottish Parliament, which had become, not only the symbol of national independence, but a real instrument of self-government. It was evident that the wishes of the Scottish people could never prevail at Westminster, even in matters which concerned Scotland alone, against the prejudices or the ignorance of Englishmen, when Scotland was represented by only forty-five commoners and sixteen peers. But the Treaty had been ratified, and there was nothing more to be said.
CHAPTER X
Arrest of Fletcher—His Release—The Jacobite Prisoners of 1708—Death of Belhaven—Fletcher retires into Private Life—Conversations with Wodrow—His Death—Views of his Character.
It is possible that Fletcher did not ride further than Saltoun; but if he did leave Scotland as soon as the Union was accomplished, he was back again in the spring of the following year. At that time the country was alarmed by the fleet which was fitted out at Dunkirk by the French, and which sailed, with the Chevalier de St. George on board, for the shores of Scotland. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended; and the Privy Council ordered the arrest of a number of suspected persons, among whom were the Duke of Gordon, the Marquis of Huntly, and no less than twenty other peers of Scotland. One of these was Belhaven. Many commoners, too, were taken up, such as Stirling of Keir, Cameron of Lochiel, Moray of Abercairney, Edmonstone of Newton, and other notorious Jacobites. But, strange to say, Fletcher was also arrested; on what grounds it is difficult to surmise, for it seems impossible to imagine that he could have been suspected of plotting for the return of the Stuarts.
Fletcher took his arrest very quietly. ‘All I fear,’ he wrote to Leven, ‘is that so inconsiderable a man as I may be forgot, and no further orders given about me.’ His indifference was justified; for on the 15th of April 1708 the Privy Council issued a warrant directing Leven to send all the prisoners up to London, ‘Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, Esq., only excepted.’ After this Fletcher disappears from public life; and Belhaven too, but in a sadder fashion. A few lines may be spared to say farewell to Saltoun’s old companion of the Country Party. Belhaven went almost mad with rage. As soon as he heard that a warrant was out for his arrest, he wrote an impetuous remonstrance to Leven, which he read aloud at a coffee-house before sending it off. After he was apprehended he addressed a letter to the Queen, demanding his release, ‘without bail, parole of honour, or any other suspicious engagement.’ Then we find him despatching a long letter to Leven, protesting his innocence, and begging to be set at liberty. He is like a caged lion. He cannot rest. ‘My good name is attacked,’ he declares; ‘I am called unfaithful to my God, and treacherous to my Queen. I must throw my stones about, I must cry and spare not.’ A few days later, he writes a most pathetic letter. ‘My wife,’ he begins, ‘who hath been my bedfellow those thirty and four years, takes it much to heart to be separated from me now.’ And then he asks authority for ‘my dear old wife to be enclosed as a prisoner in the same manner with me in everything.’ Another of his arguments is that he has work awaiting him at home at Biel; eight ploughs going, and a little lake to drain, and turn into meadowland. But he was never to see his home again. The prisoners were sent up to London; and there the eloquent Belhaven died of brain-fever, or, as some say, of a broken heart.[20]
[20] Some of the prisoners took matters more quietly. Stirling of Keir writes to his wife, from Newgate, in June: ‘We are all very well and hearty, and I assure you this is a palace in comparison of the Tolbooth of Edinburgh.’—Sir William Fraser’s Melville and Leven Book, ii. 215-218