A few days after the Commissioner had announced that the royal assent was refused, Lord Boyle, the Treasurer-Depute, moved that the Act of Supply, which had been lying on the table since May, should be read, and on this Fletcher once more brought forward his Limitations. ‘My Lord Chancellor,’ he said, ‘his Grace, the High Commissioner, having acquainted this House that he has instructions from her Majesty to give the royal assent to all Acts passed in this session except that for the security of the kingdom, it will be highly necessary to provide some new laws for securing our liberty upon the expiration of the present entail of the Crown.’ From this text he delivered an impassioned address, imploring the Estates, in particular, to accept his proposal that all places, offices, and pensions should, after the death of Anne, be conferred by Parliament alone, so long as Scotland was under the same Prince as England. ‘Without this limitation,’ he exclaimed, ‘our poverty and subjection to the Court of England will every day increase; and the question we have now before us is, whether we will be free men or slaves for ever; whether we will continue to depend, or break the yoke of our dependence; and whether we will choose to live poor and miserable, or rich, free, and happy?... By this limitation our Parliament will become the most uncorrupted senate of all Europe. No man will be tempted to vote against the interest of his country, when his country shall have all the bribes in our own hands: offices, places, pensions.... If, therefore, either reason, honour, or conscience have any influence upon us; if we have any regard either to ourselves or posterity; if there be any such thing as virtue, happiness, or reputation in this world, or felicity in a future state, let me adjure you by all these not to draw upon your heads everlasting infamy, attended with the eternal reproaches and anguish of an evil conscience, by making yourselves and your posterity miserable.’ The Ministry, well aware that only a portion of the Country Party would follow Fletcher on this question of the Limitations, wished the House to vote on the issue of whether Supply or the Limitations should be discussed. But Fletcher, who saw in a moment at what the Government were aiming, interposed, and said that he had had the honour to offer a means of securing the liberties of the nation against England; that in his opinion the country was nearly ruined, and that his proposals were necessary; but still he relied on the wisdom of the Estates, and withdrew his motion.