Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 3.djvu/302

330 be in the hands of those who lire among us, and consequently best know the merit of men, by which means, virtue will be recompensed, and vice discouraged, and the reign and government of the prince will flourish in peace and justice. I should never make an end if I should prosecute all the great advantages of this limitation, which, like a divine influence, turns all to good, as the want of it has hitherto poisoned every thing, and brought all to ruin."

If Fletcher really believed the one half of what he ascribes in this speech to his favourite limitation, he was an enthusiast of no common order. We suspect, however, that his design was in the first place to render the king insignificant, and then to dismiss him altogether; it being one of his favourite maxims, that the trappings of a monarchy and a great aristocracy would patch up a very clever little commonwealth. The high-flying tories of that day, however, or in other words, the Jacobites, in the heat of their rage and the bitterness of their disappointment, clung to him as their last hope of supporting even his most deadly attacks upon the royal prerogative, from the desperate pleasure of seeing the kingly office, since they could not preserve it for their own idol, rendered useless, ridiculous, or intolerable to any one else who should enjoy it By this means, there was a seeming consistency in those ebullitions of national independence, and a strength and vigour which they really did not possess, but which alarmed the English ministry; and the union of the kingdoms, which good sense and good feeling ought to have accomplished, at least one century earlier, was effected, at last, as a work of political necessity, fully as much as of mercy. In every stage of this important business, Fletcher was its most determined opponent, in which he was, as usual, seconded by the whole strength of the Jacobites. Happily, however, through the prudence of the English ministry, the richness of her treasury, and the imbecility of the duke of Hamilton, the leader of the Jacobites, he was unsuccessful, and retired from public life, under the melancholy idea that he had outlived, not only his country's glory, but her very existence, having witnessed, as he thought, the last glimmering of hope, and heard the last sounds of freedom that were ever to make glad the hearts of her unfortunate children. He died at London in 1716.

The character of Fletcher has been the subject of almost universal and unlimited panegyric. "He was," says the earl of Buchan, "by far the most nervous and correct speaker in the parliament of Scotland, for he drew his style from the pure models of antiquity, and not from the grosser practical oratory of his contemporaries; so that his speeches will bear a comparison with the best speeches of the reign of queen Anne, the Augustan age of Great Britain." Lockhart says, "he was always an admirer of both ancient and modern republics, but that he showed a sincere and honest inclination towards the honour and interest of his country. The idea of England's domineering over Scotland was what his generous soul could not endure. The indignities and oppression Scotland lay under galled him to the heart, so that, in his learned and elaborate discourses, he exposed them with undaunted courage and pathetic eloquence. He was blessed with a soul that hated and despised whatever was mean and unbecoming a gentleman, and was so steadfast to what he thought right, that no hazard nor advantage, not the universal empire, nor the gold of America, could tempt him to yield or desert it And I may affirm that in all his life, he never once pursued a measure with the least prospect of any thing by end to himself, nor farther than he judged it for the common benefit and advantage of his country. He was master of the English, Latin, Greek, French, and Italian languages, and well versed in history, the civil law, and all kinds of learning. He was a strict and nice observer of all the points of honour, and had some experience of the art of war, having been some time a