Most of the patriot’s contemporaries probably acknowledged the existence of the evil which he described—though he probably exaggerated it to the extent of at least a third—but there is no appearance of the slightest movement having ever been made towards the adoption of his remedy. A modern man can only wonder at such a scheme proceeding from one whose patriotism was in general too fine for use, and who held such views of the late tyrannical governments, that he was for punishing their surviving instruments several years after the Revolution.[[257]]
At the date noted, the government was revolving more rational plans for mitigating the evils of the wide-spread mendicancy. |1699.| The Privy Council issued a proclamation, adverting to the non-execution of the laws for the poor during the time of the scarcity, but intimating that better arrangements were rendered possible by the plentiful harvest just realised. The plan ordered to be adopted was to build correction-houses at Edinburgh, Dumfries, Ayr, Glasgow, Stirling, Perth, Dundee, Aberdeen, and Inverness, each for the county connected with the burgh, into which the poor should be received: no allusion is made to the other counties. The poor were to be confined to the districts in which they had had residence for the last three years. It was ordained of each correction-house, that it should have ‘a large close sufficiently enclosed for keeping the said poor people, that they be not necessitat to be always within doors to the hurt and hazard of their health.’ And the magistrates of the burghs were commanded to take the necessary steps for raising these pauper-receptacles under heavy penalties.[[258]]
Nov. 9.
It was customary for the Lords of Privy Council to grant exclusive right to print and vend books for certain terms—being all that then existed as equivalent to our modern idea of copyright. Most generally, this right was given to booksellers and printers, and bore reference rather to the mercantile venture involved in the expense of producing the book, than to any idea of a reward for authorcraft. Quite in conformity with this old view of literary rights, the Council now conferred on George Mossman, stationer in Edinburgh, ‘warrant to print and sell the works of the learned Mr George Buchanan, in ane volume in folio, or by parts in lesser volumes,’ and discharged ‘all others to print, import, or sell, the whole or any part of the said Mr George his works in any volume or character, for the space of nineteen years.’
In conformity with the same view of copyright, another Edinburgh stationer, who, in 1684, had obtained a nineteen years’ title to print Sir George Mackenzie’s Institutes of the Law of Scotland, soon after this day was favoured with a renewal of the privilege, on his contemplating a second edition.
Robert Sanders, printer in Glasgow, had printed a large impression of a small book, entitled Merchandising Spiritualised, or the Christian Merchant Trading to Heaven, by Mr James Clark, minister at Glasgow; which, in Sanders’s opinion, was calculated |1699.| to be ‘of excellent use to good people of all ranks and degrees.’ For his encouragement in the undertaking, he petitioned the Privy Council (July 13, 1703) for an exclusive right of publishing the book; and he was fortified in his claim by a letter from the author, as well as a ‘testificat from Mr James Woodrow, professor of divinity at Glasgow, anent the soundness of the said book.’ The Council, taking all these things into account, gave Sanders a licence equivalent to copyright for nineteen years.[[259]]
Nov. 30.
The abundant harvest of 1699 was acknowledged by a general thanksgiving. But, that the people might not be too happy on the occasion, the king, in the proclamation for this observance, was made to acknowledge that the late famine and heavy mortality had been a just retribution of the Almighty for the sins of the people; as likewise had been ‘several other judgments, specially the frustrating the endeavours that have been made for advancing the trade of this nation.’ [The royal councillors were too good Christians, or too polite towards their master, to insinuate as a secular cause the subserviency of the king to English merchants jealous of Scottish rivalry.] For these reasons, he said, it was proper, on the same day, that there be solemn and fervent prayers to God, entreating him to look mercifully on the sins of the people, and remove these, ‘the procuring causes of all afflictions,’ and permit that ‘we may no more abuse his goodness into wantonness and forgetfulness.’
The people of Scotland were poor, and lived in the most sparing manner. When they made an honourable attempt to extend their industry, that they might live a little better, their sovereign permitted the English to ‘frustrate the endeavour.’ He then told them to humble themselves for the sins which had procured their afflictions, and reproached them with a luxury which they had never enjoyed. The whole affair reminds one of the rebuke administered by Father Paul to the starved porter in The Duenna: ‘Ye eat, and swill, and drink, and gormandise,’ &c.
Dec. 14.