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 [Sidenote: 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] [Sidenote: 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. [Sidenote: DEC. 14.] Notwithstanding the abundance of the harvest, universally acknowledged a fortnight before by solemn religious rites, there was already some alarm beginning to arise about the future, chiefly in consequence of the very natural movements observed among possessors of and dealers in grain, for reserving the stock against [Sidenote: 1699.] eventual demands. There now, therefore, appeared a proclamation forbidding export and encouraging import, the latter step being ‘for the more effectual disappointing of the ill practices of forestalled and regraters.’[260] [Sidenote: DEC. 7.]