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means in law for preventing the exportation of the articles in
question.[288]
It was not yet three years since the people Mar. 14.
of Scotland were dying of starvation, and
ministers were trying to convince their helpless flocks that it was all
for their sins, and intended for their good. Yet now we have a
commission issued by the government, headed as usual with the
king’s name, commanding that all loads of grain which might be
brought from Ireland into the west of Scotland, should be staved and
sunk, and this, so far as appears, without a remark from any quarter
as to the horrible impiety of the prohibition 1701.
in the first place, and the proposed
destruction of the gifts of Providence in the second.[292]
An example of the simple inconvenience of these laws in the
ordinary affairs of life is presented in July 1702. Malcolm M‘Neill, a
native of Kintyre, had been induced, after the Revolution, to go to
Ireland, and become tenant of some of the waste lands there. Being
now anxious to settle again in Argyleshire, on some waste lands
belonging to the Duke of Argyle, he found a difficulty before him of a
kind now unknown, but then most formidable. How was he to get his
stock transported from Ballymaskanlan to Kintyre? Not in respect of
their material removal, but of the laws prohibiting all transportation
of cattle from Ireland to Scotland. It gives a curious idea of the law-
made troubles of the age, that Malcolm had to make formal
application to the Privy Council in Edinburgh for this purpose. On
his petition, leave to carry over two hundred black-cattle, four
hundred sheep, and forty horses, was granted. It is a fact of some
significance, that the duke appears in the sederunt of the day when
this permission was given. That without such powerful influence no
such favour was to be obtained, is sufficiently proved by the rare
nature of the transaction.
We find, in January 1700, that the 1700. Jan. 9.
execution of the laws against the
importation of Irish cattle and horses had been committed to
Alexander Maxwell, postmaster at Ayr, who seems to have performed
his functions with great activity, but not much good result. He
several times went over the whole bounds of his commission,
establishing spies and waiters everywhere along the coast. By himself
and his servants, sometimes with the assistance of soldiers, he made
a great number of seizures, but his profits never came up to his costs.
Often, after a seizure, he had to sustain the assaults of formidable
rabbles, and now and then the cattle or horses were rescued out of
his hands. For six weeks at a time he was never at home, and all that
time not thrice in his bed—for he had to ride chiefly at night—but on
all hands he met with only opposition, even from the king’s troops,
‘albeit he maintains them and defrays all their charges when he
employs them.’ On his petition (January 9, 1700), he was allowed a
hundred pounds by the Privy Council as an encouragement to
persevere in his duty.
In the autumn of 1703, an unusual anxiety was shewn to enforce
the laws against the importation of provisions from Ireland and from
England. Mr Patrick Ogilvie of Cairns, a 1700.
brother of the Lord Chancellor, Earl of
Seafield, was commissioned to guard the coasts between the Sound
of Mull and Dumfries, and one Cant of Thurston to protect the east
coast between Leith and Berwick, with suitable allowances and
powers. It happened soon after that an Irish skipper, named
Hyndman, appeared with a vessel of seventy tons, full of Irish meal,
in Lamlash Bay, and was immediately pounced upon by Ogilvie. It
was in vain that he represented himself as driven there by force of
weather on a voyage from Derry to Belfast: in spite of all his
pleadings, which were urged with an air of great sincerity, his vessel
was condemned.
Soon after, a Scottish ship, sailing under the conduct of William
Currie to Londonderry, was seized by the Irish authorities by way of
reprisal for Hyndman’s vessel. The Scottish Privy Council (February
15, 1704) sent a remonstrance to the Duke of Ormond, Lord
Lieutenant of Ireland, setting forth this act as ‘an abuse visibly to the
breach of the good correspondence that ought to be kept betwixt her
majesty’s kingdoms.’ How the matter ended does not appear; but the
whole story, as detailed in the record of the Privy Council, gives a
striking idea of the difficulties, inconveniences, and losses which
nations then incurred through that falsest of principles which
subordinates the interests of the community to those of some special
class, or group of individuals.
Ogilvie was allowed forty foot-soldiers and twenty dragoons to
assist him in his task; but we may judge of the difficulty of executing
such rules from the fact stated by him in a petition, that, during the
interval of five weeks, while these troops were absent at a review in
the centre of the kingdom, he got a list of as many as a hundred boats
which had taken that opportunity of landing from Ireland with
victual. Indeed, he said that, without a regular independent
company, it was impossible to prevent this traffic from going on.[293]
We do not hear much more on this subject till January 1712, when
Thomas Gray, merchant in Irvine, and several other persons, were
pursued before the Court of Session for surreptitious importation of
Irish victual, by Boswell and other Ayrshire justices interested in the
prices of Scottish produce. The delinquents were duly fined.
Fountainhall, after recording the decision, adds a note, in which he
debates on the principles involved in the free trade in corn. ‘This
importation of meal,’ says he, ‘is good for 1700.
the poor, plenty making it cheap, but it
sinks the gentlemen’s rents in these western shires. Which of the two
is the greater prejudice to the bulk of the nation? Problema esto:
where we must likewise balance the loss and damage we suffer by the
exporting so much of our money in specie to a foreign country to buy
it, which diminishes our coin pro tanto: But if the victual was
purchased in Ireland by exchange of our goods given for it, that takes
away that objection founded on the exporting of our money.’[294]
‘My Lord—Being told Sir Robert Dixon is not at home, I am equally satisfied
that Mr Biger should determine the use and practice of coal-masters in such cases,
if he pleases to take the trouble, which I suppose is all your lordship is desirous to
know before you let me have these boys that ran away from my colliery, and was
entertained by your people; but if I mistake your intention, and you think it
necessary I prove my title to them in law, I am most willing to refer the whole to
Mr Biger, and therefore am ready to produce my evidence at any time you please to
appoint, and if my claim is found to be good, shall expect the boys be returned
without my being obliged to find them out. My lord, I am not so well acquainted
with Mr Biger as to ask the favour; therefore hopes your lordship will do it, and
wish it may be determined soon, if convenient. I beg my best respects to Lady
Orbiston; and am, my lord,
‘P. S.—I have not the smallest pretensions to the faither of these boys, and
should have pleasure in assisting you if I could spare any of my coaliers.’[301]
Whether Mr Gibson of Durie had been dealt with in the same
manner by his colliers, we do not know; but in November he
advertised for hands, offering good and regularly paid wages, and ‘a
line under his hand, obliging himself to let them go from the works at
any time, upon a week’s warning, without any restraint whatever.’ He
would also accept a loan of workers from other coal-proprietors, and
oblige himself ‘to restore them when demanded.’[302]
I must not, however, forget—and certainly it is a curious thing to
remember—that I have myself seen in early 1701.
life native inhabitants of Scotland who had
been slaves in their youth. The restraints upon the personal freedom
of salters and colliers—remains of the villainage of the middle ages—
were not put an end to till 1775, when a statute (15 Geo. III. 28)
extinguished them. I am tempted to relate a trivial anecdote of actual
life, which brings the recentness of slavery in Scotland vividly before
us.
About the year 1820, Mr Robert Bald of Alloa, mining-engineer,
being on a visit to Mr Colin Dunlop, at the Clyde Ironworks, near
Glasgow, found among the servants of the house an old working-
man, commonly called Moss Nook, who seemed to be on easy terms
with his master. One day, Mr Bald heard the following conversation
take place between Mr Dunlop and this veteran:
‘Moss Nook, you don’t appear, from your style of speaking, to be of
this part of the country. Where did you originally come from?’
‘Oh, sir,’ answered Moss Nook, ‘do you not know that your father
brought me here long ago from Mr M‘Nair’s of the Green [a place
some miles off, on the other side of the river]? Your father used to
have merry-meetings with Mr M‘Nair, and, one day, he saw me, and
took a liking to me. At the same time, Mr M‘Nair had taken a fancy to
a very nice pony belonging to your father; so they agreed on the
subject, and I was niffered away for the pony. That’s the way I came
here.’
The man had, in short, been a slave, and was exchanged for a
pony. To Mr Bald’s perception, he had not the least idea that there
was anything singular or calling for remark in the manner of his
leaving the Green.