Such were the means by which Fletcher would have put an end to idleness and mendicancy in Scotland; and his well-known description of the state of things may be once more quoted, as an explanation of how he came to hold such views. ‘In all times there have been about a hundred thousand of those vagabonds who have lived without any regard or subjection to the laws of the land, or even those of God and nature.... Many murders have been discovered among them, and they are not only a most unspeakable oppression to poor tenants (who, if they give not bread or some kind of provision to perhaps forty such villains in one day, are sure to be insulted by them), but they rob many poor people who live in houses distant from any neighbourhood. At country weddings, markets, burials, and other the like occasions, they are to be seen--both men and women--perpetually drunk, cursing, blaspheming, and fighting together.’ Apart from this evil of a large pauper population, for which he had the courage to propose the remedy of slavery, Fletcher thought that much of the poverty in Scotland was caused by high rents. These, he says, are so excessive that they make ‘the tenant even poorer than his servant, whose wages he cannot pay,’ and this affects not only the day labourer, but the village tradesmen, and the merchants of the county towns. Rents must therefore be reduced; and not only so, but an Act of Parliament should be passed, forbidding any man to possess more land than he can cultivate by his own servants. By this means more labour would be employed, the soil would be better cultivated, and the wealth of the country vastly increased. ‘In a few years,’ says Fletcher, ‘the country will be everywhere enclosed and improved to the greatest height, the plough being everywhere in the hand of the possessor.’ He also suggested, as a cure for the depressed state of agriculture, the crude remedy that lending money on interest should be forbidden. By this means, he says, ‘men who have small sums at interest will be obliged to employ it in trade or the improvement of land.’ Proposals such as these, which nowadays some will say were in advance of his time, and others will regard as impracticable and absurd, were not taken seriously at the time he made them. ‘Mr. Fletcher’s schemes,’ says Sir John Clerk, a commonplace man, but a shrewd and cautious observer, ‘had but very little credit, because he himself was often for changing them; though, in other respects, a very worthy man. It used to be said of him, that it would be easy to hang by his own schemes of government; for, if they had taken place, he would have been the first man that would have attempted an alteration.’[4] [4] MS. note on Lockhart, quoted in Somerville, p. 204.