CHAPTER IX

[12]Add.mss.28,055, fol. 248. This is a document endorsed, ‘To Mr. Harley.’ It is evidently the report of a spy, one of the many employed by Harley.

When the Estates went into the question of Limitations, Rothes introduced a measure for regulating the mode of appointing Privy Councillors and other officers of the Crown, and Belhaven introduced another for triennial Parliaments. Both these measures were popular with the House. But Fletcher was not satisfied, and he again brought forward his own pet scheme. His Twelve Limitations, which the Estates had, in the session of 1703, declined to incorporate in the Act of Security, were now known as the Duodecem Tabulæ,the Twelve Tables of the Law. But Fletcher himself was in no joking humour when he moved that the Estates should solemnly adopt them as a Claim of Rights, not requiring the consent of the Sovereign.

On the 15th of August he made an elaborate speech upon the subject. He was listened to in silence, and, when he sat down, was asked to withdraw his motion. But the more he was appealed to the stiffer he became. A debate of four hours followed, in the course of which he fell foul of Stair. Stair had sneered at the tenth limitation, which provided that no pardon granted by the Crown, for any offence, should be valid without the consent of Parliament; and Fletcher thereupon exclaimed, ‘It is no wonder his Lordship is against this, for had there been such a law he would have been hanged long ago for the advice he gave King James, the murder of Glencoe, and his whole conduct since the Revolution.’ But the feeling of the House was against him. He saw this, and, muttering to himself, ‘Well, is it so? I’ll serve them a trick for it,’ he announced that he would not press the subject, but would move that the House should consider the measures which had been brought in by Rothes and Belhaven.[13]

[13]Add.mss.28,055, fol. 277.

On the following day, when Rothes moved the second reading of his measure, Fletcher again tried tobring forward his favourite subject, which led Stair to say that the honourable member was resolved to do by his Limitations as the ape did by her young, grasp them so tight that she stifled them. Fletcher lost his temper, and called out that the noble lord had, in the days of King James, stretched the prerogative till it nearly cracked, when he penned the declaration of arbitrary power.

This was a very palpable hit, but the Chancellor rose and stopped the altercation by moving that the House should proceed to business; and on a vote being taken whether the Estates, or the Sovereign with the consent of the Estates, should appoint Privy Councillors, Judges, and other officers, it carried in favour of the Estates by twenty-three, in spite of the opposition of the Government. Nothing, however, came of these wild expedients for limiting the power of the Crown. The Estates passed Acts for triennial Parliaments, for giving to Parliament the power of appointing officers of the Crown, and for securing the presence of Scottish ambassadors at the making of all treaties, but to these enactments the royal assent was refused. The proposals for improving the trade of the country took the form of a number of measures, only a few of which received the royal assent. The general purpose of these measures was Protection to home trade and manufactures, and retaliation on England for passing the Alien Act. Of these the royal assent was given toan Act forbidding the importation of English, Irish, and foreign butter and cheese, to an Act for assisting the fisheries of Scotland, to an Act for encouraging the exportation of beef and pork, and to another declaring Scottish linen and woollen manufactures free of duty at exportation. In addition to these there was a statute, which was considered the most important of all, for appointing a Council of Trade for Scotland.

In the meantime the Government were waiting an opportunity for again bringing forward the question of the Union; and at last, on the 24th of August, Mar’s resolution on the subject was discussed. Fletcher moved, a few days later, an address to the throne, complaining of the way in which Scotland had been treated by the English Parliament, which he declared to be ‘injurious to the honour and interest of this nation.’ Though this address was not adopted, Hamilton pressed upon the House a resolution binding the Estates to resist any Union which would change the fundamental laws of the Scottish constitution. At this point the Country Party appear to have agreed to the principle of an Union; but they were resolved that the Scottish Parliament, the outward sign and instrument of an independent national existence, must not be abolished. Gradually the Act for a Treaty of Union took shape; but, when the Government were congratulating themselves on having weathered the storm, Fletcher moved to amend the Act by inserting a clause to provide that the Commissioners for Union should not meet until the ‘Alien Clause’ of the recent English Act was repealed. He and his friends, both Jacobites and members of the Old Country Party, probably believed that England would refuse to treat on such terms, and that, therefore, the Union, which he now saw was threatening the independence of Scotland, would collapse. It was likely that the Government would be defeated if Fletcher’s amendment was openly opposed, and the dexterous hand of Queensberry is seen in the way in which the difficulty was met. The Government professed to agree with the object of the amendment, but proposed that, instead of adding it to the Union Act, the House should, as soon as that Act was passed, proceed to consider whether the question of the Alien Clause should form the subject of a resolution of the Estates or of a separate Act of Parliament. Fletcher agreed to this, and his motion stands on the rolls of the Scottish Parliament in these terms: ‘Then agreed and ordered,nemine contradicente, that the Commissioners to be named by Her Majesty for the Kingdom of Scotland shall not commence the Treaty of Union until the clause in the English Act declaring the subjects of Scotland aliens be rescinded.’ The Scottish Ministers, in transmitting this resolution to London, carefully explained that they had found itnecessary, if the Union was to go on, to comply with the wish of the Estates that some resentment should be expressed against England.[14]

[14]Halifax to Godolphin, 4th Sept. 1705. Add.mss.28,055.

But before this point was reached there had been a very sharp debate regarding the appointment of the Commissioners on Union. The story is told by Lockhart, and is well known. At a late hour on the eveningof Saturday the 1st of September, when most of the members had left in the belief that the House was about to rise, Hamilton suddenly addressed the Chancellor, and moved that the nomination of the Commissioners should be left to the Queen. Some members of the Opposition rushed from the House, shouting that they were betrayed; but Fletcher sprang to his feet, and made a personal attack on Hamilton for his inconsistency in making this proposal. ‘Saltoun opposed that most bitterly,’ says Sir David Hume, in his diary. But it was in vain. The vote was called for, and Hamilton’s motion was carried.[15]‘From this day,’ says Lockhart, ‘we may date the commencement of Scotland’s ruin.’

[15]Lockhart says, ‘by a plurality of eight voices, of which His Grace The Duke of Hamilton had the honour to be one’ (Memoirs, i. 133). Sir David Hume says the majority was forty.

The session ended quietly on the 21st of September, when the Commissioner touched with the sceptre the Acts to which he had obtained leave to give the royal assent, of which the most important was the ‘Act for a Treaty with England.’

The Union Commission at Westminster—The Act of Union passed—Belhaven’s Speech—Violent conduct of Fletcher and other Members during the Debates.

Whenthe English Parliament met in October, not only the Alien clause, but all the hostile clauses of which the Estates complained, were repealed. Whether Fletcher was pleased that the object of his motion was so completely and speedily gained may be doubted; but there was now nothing to prevent the progress of the negotiations for the Union. So the Commissioners of both nations met at Westminster on the 16th of April 1706.

The result of their labours still remains. The question which they had to face was how to adjust the relations of the two countries in a manner consistent with a complete Union. It was not enough to say that there was to be one Sovereign, one Parliament, and equal trading privileges. The Union meant far more than that. Although the machinery of Government and the modes of social life were simpler then than they now are, the problem of applying the principle of a full and incorporating Union to the usages of the two nations was one of the most formidable character. The institutions and the internal economy of the two peoples were, in many respects, entirely different. If they were to be really united, if they were to become one people in their interests and their aspirations, it was necessary that, at the commencement of their common national life, there should be a clear understanding of the precise terms on which they stood to one another. The difficulty of arriving at such an understanding was enormous. 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 thedebt 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? The incidence of taxation was different in each country. The customs and the excise and the manner of their collection was different. The coinage of England was different from that of Scotland. All these matters were now to be considered and adjusted, if possible, in a fair and reasonable manner; so that the Articles of Union should be ratified by the two Parliaments, and favourably received by the nations. Such were some of the difficult questions which were discussed by the Union Commissioners at Westminster from April to July 1706; and the famous Treaty of Union, the result of their deliberations, is, upon the whole, one of the most successful works of practical statesmanship which the world has ever seen.

On Monday the 22nd of July 1706 the Commissioners of both Kingdoms met at Westminster and signed the Treaty of Union; and on the following morning they went to St. James’s, and presented the document to her Majesty.

The Scottish Parliament was to meet upon the 3rd October, and the Government wished to keep the Articles of Union secret until then. No copies of the Treaty were allowed to pass into circulation. A proclamation forbidding the making of wagers upon thesubject was strictly enforced, and a strong effort was made to prevent the publication of writings about the Union. But it was, of course, impossible to stop the discussion of so momentous a question; all the more, as many persons were in possession of the main outlines of the Treaty. The Whigs had already made up their minds that the Articles would be ratified by the Estates; and even the most violent members of the Jacobite and Country Parties saw that the general feeling of Scotland was now favourable to the Union, a fact which Lockhart explains by saying that false accounts of the Articles were given by the Scottish Commissioners on their return from England. ‘We have,’ Halifax writes, ‘all the reason to promise ourselves success in an Union with Scotland. All the letters from that country give us great hopes that it will be accepted by their Parliament.’[16]

[16]Halifax to the Elector of Hanover, 23rd August 1706.

In the discussions which now took place, the community seems to have been divided into three classes: those who were distinctly in favour of an Union, those who were distinctly opposed to it, and those who were in favour of an Union, provided the separate Parliament of Scotland was allowed to remain. If Fletcher was theauthor of a pamphlet which has been attributed to him, entitled,The State of the Controversy betwixt United and Separate Parliaments, he must be reckoned as amongst the last class; and, indeed, he seldom expressed any opinion which was not consistent with supporting a federal Union. But it is very doubtful whether he wrote this pamphlet. He was, however, supposed to be writing, while the Commission was sitting at Westminster, in favour of a dissolution, on the ground that the question could only be lawfully settled by a Parliament elected for that purpose by the constituencies.[17]But, though the press was busy printing pamphlets on the subject of the Union, the time for such discussions was past, and everything depended on what was done on the floor of the Parliament House.

[17]Baillie to Roxburghe, 19th April 1706, in the Jerviswoode Correspondence. The full title of the pamphlet to which I have alluded is: ‘State of the Controversy betwixt United and Separate Parliaments, whether these Interests which are to be united by the present Treaty, and the Interests which, by the same Treaty, are to remain separate and distinct, are most properly and safely lodged under the Guardianship of a United Parliament, or under that of Separate Parliaments. Printed in the year 1706.’

During the discussions on the Articles of Union Fletcher displayed the same courage, and the same defects of temper, as during the previous sessions of the Parliament. Sir David Hume, in his diary, frequently mentions the scenes in which the member for Haddingtonshire was the leader. For instance, on one occasion, when it was proposed that a sermon should be preached, on a ‘Fast Day,’ in the Parliament House, a proposal which was supported by some lay members of the Commission, or Standing Committee, of the Church of Scotland, ‘Salton having alleged that if he would tell what he knew, those of the Commission who were for that manner of the Fast would be ashamed to hold up their faces; he being challenged by several honourable members of the House, who were also members of the Commission, the business was with some struggle let fall.’ On the next day after this incident, Fletcher, in attacking the Commissioners on Union, said they had ‘betrayed their trust.’ He was called to order, but said he was ‘sorry he could not get softer words.’ Then it was moved that he should be sent to the bar; but atlast he was persuaded to say he was sorry if he had offended any one, and the matter dropped.

On another day Hume describes how, when he entered the Parliament House, he found an altercation going on, apparently over the Minutes of the last sitting. Fletcher said, ‘What my Lord Stair has said in reference to the Minutes is not true.’ To this Stair answered that he ‘desired the House to take notice of what Salton had said; otherwise he would be obliged to say what he had said was a lie.’

There was an hour’s ‘discourse’ about this; and then they were both called upon to ask pardon of the House. Fletcher at once apologised to the House, but ‘shifted, craving Stair’s pardon.’ Stair then said, ‘If what he had said offended the House, he craved pardon.’ The Chancellor next appealed to Fletcher. He said he ‘hoped Salton would acknowledge that he meant no reflection on my Lord Stair, but only to contradict the thing he had said, and if he had given him any offence he craved his pardon, which,’ Sir David goes on, ‘Salton assented to, and both of them gave their word of honour not to resent it without-doors.’ There were many scenes of this description during the last session of the Scottish Parliament. The passion with which the debates were conducted was extraordinary. It was sometimes difficult to hear a word of what was said. ‘Scandalous disorder,’ in the words of one member, challenges to fight on the floor of the House, shouting, interruptions, calls to order, Hamilton, whose voice wasvery loud, overbearing his opponents by sheer strength of lung, Fletcher springing to his feet, ready, at a moment’s notice, to draw his sword,—it was amidst all this clamour and noise that the Union was debated.

Perhaps the stormiest sittings of all that stormy session were those of the 2nd and 4th of November, when the first Article of Union was debated and voted on. It was on the first of these days that Belhaven made his great oration. It was certainly the event of that day; and it is generally spoken of as the greatest speech delivered during the debates on the Union. But we have no means of knowing whether this was the case; for no materials exist from which we can judge of the eloquence of Stair, whom all the writers of his time agree in describing as an orator of surpassing power, the greatest that ever spoke under the roof of the Parliament House. And though the palm of oratory belonged to Stair, he was not without rivals. When Roxburghe spoke, he charmed even his opponents. The speeches of Argyll were full of passionate vehemence. Hamilton’s pathetic eloquence is the theme of every Jacobite pen. Nor can it be doubted that Seafield and Cockburn of Ormiston were adroit and ready debaters; while Fletcher’s speeches in the session of 1703 are, so far as polished language and close reasoning go, superior to any of Belhaven’s.[18]But of all that was said in the debates of these two days, only two speeches have been preserved in full. The speechof Seton of Pitmedden, a plain country gentleman, is one of them. Its solid reasoning and sound conclusions, which events have justified, did not catch the public fancy. 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; and, both in its composition and its effects, it is as a theatrical display that the famous speech of Belhaven must be regarded.

[18]None of Fletcher’s speeches in the session of 1706-1707 are preserved. The speaking in the Estates at this time was very good. The author of the Ochtertyre MS. says, in describing Mr. Spittal of Leuchat: ‘He spoke the most elegant Scots I ever heard, probably the language spoken at the Union Parliament, which was composed of people of high fashion.’

On the same day Fletcher spoke, ‘with great warmth,’ says Cunningham, ‘and vehemently reproached and inveighed against the Queen’s Ministers, without any regard to his own fortune, though very large. Some there are who say that he was too hot in his arguments, and too violent in his resentments, and that he did thereby hurt his own cause.’

But the cause was past helping or hurting now. The time for argument was gone. It was on Saturday the 2nd of November that Fletcher and Belhaven poured forth the vials of their wrath; and on the following Monday the vote was taken. As is well known, the Squadrone threw in their lot with the Government, and the majority, by which the Union was supported during the rest of the session, was secured.

From that time until the 16th of January 1707, when the Treaty of Union was finally approved by the Estates, Fletcher continued to oppose the Government. As soon as the Act approving of the Treaty, with the changes made in it by the Estates, had been touched with the sceptre, it was sent up to London, to be discussed in Parliament; and the Estates continued to sit for the transaction of formal business, and also to frame the Acts of Parliament which were to regulate the method of electing the sixteen representative peers and the forty-five commoners who were to represent Scotland in the Parliament of Great Britain.

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.

Fletcher may have been present, on the 19th of March, when the Act of the English Parliament ratifying the Treaty of Union was presented to the Estates; but, according to tradition, he left Edinburgh immediately after the House rose. ‘On the day of his departure, his friends crowded around him, entreating him to stay. Even after his foot was in the stirrup, they continued their solicitations, anxiously crying, “Will you forsake your country?” He reverted his head, and darting on them a look of indignation, keenly replied, “It is only fit for the slaves that sold it!” then leaped upon the saddle and put spurs to his horse, leaving the whole company struck with a momentary humiliation,and (blind to the extravagance of his conduct) at a loss which most to admire, the pride of his virtue, or the elevation of his spirit.’[19]

[19]The author of theHistory 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 bywhich 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 commonersand sixteen peers. But the Treaty had been ratified, and there was nothing more to be said.

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.

Itis 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’sMelville and Leven Book, ii. 215-218

Henceforth Fletcher’s life was that of a private ‘person of quality.’ He never married. When asked the reason why, he used to answer, ‘My brother has got the woman that should have been my wife.’ This was Margaret Carnegie, the eldest daughter of Sir David Carnegie of Pittarrow. Perhaps Andrew Fletcher did not attract her—‘the low, thin man of brown complexion, full of fire, with a stern, sour look,’ to quote the well-known description of the Laird of Saltoun. At all eventsshe fell in love with Henry, the younger brother, who, besides, had this in his favour, that Andrew was an outlaw in Holland while he was paying his court to the young lady. Her father was at first against the marriage; but the young people insisted on having their own way, and they were married on the 27th of April 1688.[21]The couple were very poor, and Henry became tenant of the mill at Saltoun, after the estate had been restored to his brother. Mrs. Henry Fletcher was a woman of great capacity, and it was she who, acting probably on hints given by her brother-in-law, got machinery from Holland, introduced the Dutch system of making ‘pot barley,’ till then unknown in Scotland, imported a winnowing machine, or fanners, and, in short, was the founder of the Saltoun Barley Mill, which was a household word in Scotland for many years. ‘So jealous,’ says Sir William Fraser, ‘was Lady Saltoun of the secret of the construction of her machinery, and so anxious was she to retain a monopoly of this particular trade, that, whilst she occupied, during the day, a room in the mill specially fitted up for herself, all orders for barley were received across a door which was securely fastened by a chain to prevent strangers from entering.’

[21]Sir William Fraser’sHistory of the Carnegies, Earls of Southesk, ii. 275.

This clever Scottish lady of the old school also started the manufacture of Holland cloth on a wide field near the mill; and in a hollow near Saltoun Hall the British Linen Company worked for many years, until they changed their business into that of a banking company. Perhaps a dame of so very practical a turn would not have sympathised with the Utopian dreams of her famous brother-in-law, and had chosen wisely. The walls of a new mill which was erected at Saltoun in 1710 are still as strong as when they were built; and some fragments of the old machinery still remain.

During the latter part of his life Fletcher lived chiefly in England or abroad. Wodrow has preserved an account of some conversations which he had with him. On one occasion Fletcher told him that ‘he used to say to Sunderland, Wharton, and the leading Whigs in England, that they were the greatest fools imaginable in three things, and acted directly contrary to their interest: 1st, In the settling of the Succession upon Hanover, he remarked that the Lutherans, and still the nearer people goes to Popery, they are still the more for absolute government; and so much the more for a Tory. 2nd, In promoting and violently pushing the Union with Scotland, which now they are sensible is anaddition to the power of the Court, and makes the Prince by far more absolute than before; and 3rd, In the affair of Sacheverell, when he (Fletcher) was in London, and conversed with them at that time, their pushing of his trial was the most unpopular thing they could do, and raised the cry of the “Danger of the Church,” and proposed nothing in the world to themselves by such a prosecution. Things were openly vented upon the behalf of absolute Government and non-resistance; and the event has sadly verified all his thoughts as to this.’[22]

[22]This conversation was in 1712, when the Tory Government of Harley and St. John was in office.

On another occasion Fletcher expounded his ideas on the subject of church patronage. He said a Presbytery was no judge of a young man’s fitness to be minister of a congregation, and he had a plan of his own ready. He would appoint six Professors of Divinity in each University, none of whom were to teach more than ten or twelve students; for they could not know more than that number intimately. These Professors were not only to lecture, but to watch the temper and character of each student, and license him when he was really capable of being a minister. Then,when a vacancy occurred, the Presbytery was to ask the Professor to send down a man whom they thought suited to the parish which was vacant. If the people did not like the man who was sent, another was to come; and so on until the congregation was satisfied.

Wodrow asked Fletcher if he had not thought of writing a History of the Union; but he replied that he had kept no notes of the proceedings, and his memory was not to be relied on. He lamented his bad memory, and said he used to write out all his speeches, and repeat them, over and over again, to himself, like a schoolboy learning his lessons. He also said that he had so little readiness in debate, that if he did not know what subject was to be brought forward, he was obliged to prepare several speeches, which he laboriously learned by heart.

In 1716 Fletcher was in Paris, where he took ill. His nephew Andrew, afterwards a judge of the Court of Session under the title of Lord Milton, who was then studying at Leyden, hearing that his uncle wished to return home, hurried to Paris. They reached London, but the old gentleman was unable to go further. Lord Sunderland called on him, and asked if there wasanything he wished done. ‘I have a nephew,’ he replied, ‘who has been studying the law. Make him a judge when he is fit for it.’[23]

[23]‘I have heard,’ says Mr. Ramsay, ‘Sir Hugh Paterson say, who knew Saltoun well, that he early predicted his nephew would turn out acorrupt fellow, and a perfect courtier. Saltoun, however, hated all Kings and Ministers of State.’—Ochtertyre MS. 1. 87.

On the 15th of September 1716 he died; and his nephew brought his body to Scotland in a leaden coffin, which was laid in the family vault under the parish church of Saltoun, where it still remains.

A scrap of paper among the manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford bears this curious memorandum, in the handwriting of Thomas Rawlinson, the great antiquary and book collector: ‘Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, dyed in London, on Sunday, September 16th 1716, of a flux contracted by drinking ye waters of the River Seine at Paris. He died Christianly and bravely, only concerned for ye ruin of his country, and yt he had been base enough to have kissed the hand of ye insulting Tyrant.’[24]

[24]The date given by Rawlinson is wrong. Fletcher died on the 15th of September.

He was succeeded, in the estate of Saltoun, by his brother Henry, and afterwards by his nephew, Andrew Fletcher of Milton, who, as Lord Justice-Clerk, was, for many years, the Duke of Argyll’s right-hand man in the management of Scottish affairs. Many of the books collected by Fletcher are still preserved at Saltoun Hall, where there is a tablet with this inscription, ‘This Library was builta.d.1775, by Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, to contain that excellent collection of books made by his great uncle of Illustrious Memory, whose name he bore. Lieutenant-General Henry Fletcher of Saltoun inscribes this marble to the memory of his lamented brother, and desires to remind their common successors that the Love of Letters or of Arms has always distinguished the family of Saltoun.’

Fletcher occupies a peculiar place in the history of Scottish Literature. His works were produced during a period of about six years, from 1698 to 1704, and at that time Learning had sunk to a very low point in Scotland. Sir George M’Kenzie stands out almost, if not entirely, alone as a man of Letters during the closing years of the seventeenth century; but his style is turgid, and wholly wanting in that quality of simplicity which is to be found in everything written by Fletcher.Burnet’s chief works, with the exception of theHistory of His Own Times, which was not published until after his death, appeared before the end of the century; but though a Scotsman, he can hardly be placed in the catalogue of purely Scottish writers. Pamphlets and sermons there were in abundance, many of them composed with great skill, and most of them invaluable from the light which they throw on the controversies of that time; but in point of style Fletcher is unique. He had no models. If he had written ten or fifteen years later, it might have been supposed that he had imitated Addison; for, especially in theAccount of a Conversation, the style of Fletcher resembles the style of Addison. But he had ceased to write long before theSpectatorappeared. To Burnet he doubtless owed a sound classical education, and a knowledge of political history. The clearness and elegance of his style, however, were certainly not learned from Burnet, but were evidently the result of studying, very closely, the literature of Greece and Rome, from which he loves to draw illustrations for the purpose of enforcing his own theories of government, and his peculiar political schemes.

The political schemes of Fletcher may have been visionary, but that he honestly believed in them is evident. The Utopias which he loved to imagine may have been wild dreams, but there was always something noble in the ideals which he set up. His faults were those of a man of ardent temper. I have notattempted to conceal them, and the men of his own day, even those who most widely disagreed with him in his views on public questions, seem all to admire him, with only one or two exceptions. One of these exceptions is Swift, whose description of him is: ‘A most arrogant, conceited pedant in politics; cannot endure any contradiction in any of his views or paradoxes.’ But a Scotsman was to Swift like a red rag to a bull. Oldmixon, too, who knew Fletcher, says, and certainly with some truth, that he was ‘hot, positive, obstinate, opinionative.’ Nor does Sir John Clerk of Pennycuik seem to have fully appreciated Fletcher. ‘He was,’ he says, ‘a little untoward in his temper, and much inclined to eloquence. He made many speeches in Parliament, which are all printed, but was not very dexterous in making extemporary replies. He was, however, a very honest man, and meant well in everything he said and did, except in cases where his humour, passion, or prejudice were suffered to get the better of his reason.’ On another occasion he speaks of him as a ‘worthy man’; but that excellent placeman, Sir John Clerk, patting Fletcher of Saltoun on the back, is the tame pigeon patronising the eagle.

But, as against the hostile opinions of Swift and Oldmixon, and the lukewarm verdict of Sir John Clerk, it wouldbe easy to fill page after page of unstinted praise from the writings of men who either knew him, or had good opportunities for observing his conduct. Of these I shall quote only two. In Mackay’s well-knownCharacters of the Nobility of Scotland, which are said to have been compiled for the private use of the Princess Sophia, we have what may be called the official opinion of Fletcher. ‘He is,’ says Mackay, ‘a gentleman steady in his principles, of nice honour, with abundance of learning; brave as the sword he wears, and bold as a lion. A sure friend, but an irreconcilable enemy; would readily lose his life to serve his country, but would not do a base thing to save it.’

The Tory Lockhart, also, in a passage which is too long for full quotation, draws the character of Fletcher. He tells us how the Laird of Saltoun was master of the Latin, Greek, French, and Italian languages, and well versed in history and the civil law; a nice observer of all points of honour; free from all manner of vice; impatient under opposition, but affable in private conversation. ‘To sum up all,’ says Lockhart, ‘he was a learned, gallant, honest, and every other way well accomplished gentleman; and if ever a man proposes to serve and merit well of his country, let him place his courage, zeal, and constancy before him, and think himself sufficiently applauded and rewarded by obtaining the character of being like Andrew Fletcherof Saltoun.’

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