foresees that he will be accused of inconsistency, and must face the question how he, the champion of liberty, can propose such a measure. But he answers that he regards not names but things. ‘We are told,’ he says, ‘there is not a slave in France; that when a slave sets his foot upon French ground, he becomes immediately free; and I say there is not a freeman in France, because the King takes away part of any man’s property at his pleasure; and that, let him do what he will to any man, there is no remedy.’ Public liberty may be complete in a country where there is domestic slavery, and he only proposes that the idle, sturdy beggar should be made a slave for the benefit of the country at large. That Fletcher was favourable to domestic slavery, as a social institution, is clear. He argues that the clergy are to blame for the ‘multitude of beggars who now oppress the world.’ His view is that churchmen, ‘never failing to confound things spiritual with temporal, and consequently all good order and good government, either through mistake or design,’ recommended masters, when Christianity was established, to set at liberty such of their slaves as would become Christians; and the result of this advice was that thousands of persons, who had been well clothed, well fed, and well housed as slaves, were thrown loose upon the world, which has ever since been overrun by a ragged army of idle freemen who live on alms. He therefore urges that in Scotland stern measures should be taken, especially with the Highlanders, for whom he has a profound contempt. ‘Nor indeed,’ he says, ‘can there be any thorough reformation in this affair, so long as the one-half of our country, in extent of ground, is possessed by a people who are all gentlemen only because they will not work, and who in everything are more contemptible than the vilest slaves, except that they always carry arms, because for the most part they live upon robbery.’ His proposals are that hospitals should be provided for such beggars as are old and feeble; but as for the rest, he would divide them into two classes. The harmless beggars should be employed as domestic slaves. The dangerous ruffians should be sent to Venice, to ‘serve in the galleys against the common enemy of Christendom.’