Each camp was to break up, at certain seasons, into two parties, and spread over the mountains, marshes, and country roads, and practise tactics by manœuvring against each other. No clergymen nor women should be allowed to enter them; but ‘speeches exhorting to military and virtuous actions should be often composed, and pronounced publicly by such of the youth as were, by education and natural talents, qualified for it.’ The strictest discipline was to be enforced. ‘The punishments should be much more rigorous than those inflicted for the same crimes by the law of the land. And there should be punishments for some things not liable to any by the common law, immodest and insolent words or actions, gaming, and the like.’ 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.