Early next morning Fletcher and his friends had a meeting at which they prepared a measure which they intended to introduce. It provided that there should be an election every year, at which no officer of the army, or of the customs or excise, could be elected; that Parliament should meet at least once in every two years, and that each sitting should be adjourned on the motion of a member, and not by the Commissioner. They agreed that if the royal assent was given to this Act, they would vote the Supplies. Queensberry heard of this, but he could not, for the sake of securing a small sum of money, run the risk of giving the royal assent to a measure which introduced such important changes. Accordingly, when the House met, he rose, and prorogued the Parliament. The Country Party spared no pains to let the people of England know the importance which the people of Scotland attached to the measure to which the royal assent had been refused. The Act of Security was circulated, and widely read in London, in an edition to which some notes were added stating that nothing was ever done with more deliberation by the Scottish Parliament, and that there was not a shadow of a reason for supposing that bribery, or any unfair means, had been used to secure a majority, ‘considering the quality and estates of those who were for it.’ Fletcher revised his speeches, and printed them in a small octavo volume, for the purpose of educating the English mind. They were, perhaps, not much appreciated. The leaves of the copy in the Bodleian Library at Oxford remained uncut till the autumn of 1896. Englishmen saw just two facts--that the Scottish Parliament had refused Supplies in the midst of an European war, and that the Scottish people wished to be independent of the English Crown. CHAPTER VI ‘A Conversation concerning a Right Regulation of Government for the Common Good of Mankind.’