in Specie from hence and all to come either first or last into the hands of the Dutch and Annually to encrease their Treasure in that proportion To which let this be subjoyned That besides the Mony remitted to Pay our Army there has been a great deal of Silver carried over Year after Year in the King's Yatchts as well as in other Vessels Partly to be distributed among several Princes of Europe to keep them in the Confederacy and to gain Men from them for the Upholding the War and partly to be squander'd away among the Ministers in those Courts to Counsel and Advise their Masters suitably to the Instructions which King William should give them and partly for the Bribing of the Burgher-masters and Pensioners of the most considerable Cities of the Seven Provincs to be Zealous in Moulding and Influencing their respective Towns to to persevere in the Interest of their Stadtholder and to support him in all the Designs in which his Ambition should engage him as being contrived and adapted to their Advantage But that which is more to be adverted under this head is that all or much the greatest part of this Silver thus Transported whether in order to the paying our Army or for other Ends and Designs has been theâ—e melted down and Coyned into Skillings that are not worth half the Intâ—insick Value of what they are either Current for there or paid to our Soldiers for their Salaries and to Subsist upon or made passable in the procuration of the whole Equivalent in Bills of what they go at in Holland to be Conveyed and made Solvable elsewhere By which means alone the Dutch have since the Revolution made an Advantage to themselves of many Millions And therefore when the Society stiled the Bank of England which was Establisted by the late Parliament and to whom upon their Undertaking for the Remission of Mony for the payment of our Army or to any other in order thereunto there was Liberty granted by a particular Statute for Conveying over so much as is there limited either in Bullion or in Specie Coyned I say when the fore-named Company would have Erected a Mint on the other Side in order to have Melted down and Re-coyned what they had Transported in such embased Mony as was there current and passable the Dutch not only refused the suffering it to be done in their own Provinces but by the Interest they have among and Authority they bear over their bordering Neighbours in Flanders did obstruct our obtaining of that Freedom and Privilege and thereby did wholy frustrate and defeat that Project and Design so that by this single fraudulent and avaritious Trick and Artifice they do to this day make Cent. per Cent. of all the Mony that is remitted to Holland either for the payment of our Army or for other uses and ends Nor is it unworthy of Remark that whereas whilst they were drawing our Bullion and Coyn from us and in order to get most of the Treasure and Silver of England into their possession and have it lodged in their Country they willingly paid and allowed Three and Forty of their Skillings as the Equivalent of one Pound Sterling of ours and gave our Soldiers so much readily in Exchange for it that now having gained and engrossed the greatest part of our Mony and finding that what we continue to remit in Specie at present is not out of Choice but upon Necessity they have sunk the value of our Mony to Eight and Twenty of their base Skillings which is the most they have given of late and will give no more at present for One Round Sterling of ours Which being less by near a third part than what they gave in exchange for it before is an incredible Damage to us and a vast Gain to them at our Loss and Expence And which villainous Depradation of theirs upon us cannot without our utter Impoverishment and Ruin be much longer suffered or connived at To which may be added that since the Diminishing and Clipping of our Silver Coyn which we are indebted to the Revolution for and which had never befaln us in the degree it hath but thro the ill Administration of our Dutch Prince who is glad of and encourageth all the Methods that may render us poor and make us despicable The Hollanders will either receive none of our clipt Mony tho it is in a manner all that is left current in the Kingdom or if they do receive any of it it is only in proportion to the intrinsick Value and not according to the Rate that it doth pass for here and hath done for a great while So that if any of that Mony be sent over either in payment to our Soldiers or come to be carried abroad upon other occasions the Dutch will take it but for a Moyety of what it commonly and universally goes for here And yet in this very Interim while they either wholy refuse the taking our clipt Mony or depress the Value of it to half what it now passeth for in England our poor Soldiers beyond Sea are forced to take their base Skillings and other of their debased Mony at what Rates they are pleased to make them current tho not worth half of it with respect to their intrinsick Value And all these things are some of the Felicities which we enjoy duâ—ing this Reign of Restoration to our Liberties and of Exaltation to greater Wealth Prosperity and Happiness than our Belgick Prince will by his Outlandish Logick allow us to have known heretofore Yea besides the fore ment ioned Spoyles and Rapines which they have Committed upon us in the Methods that I have Detected to the enriching themselves and the imyoverishing us in our Silver Coyn. I might also upon very good Authorities Charge them with the fraudulent Importation both of light and false Mony bearing the Stamp and Impression of our own but Minted in Holland and then Vended among us at the Rates which our best and weightiest Silver Pieces of such and such Denominations have used to go Nor will any Man who knows the Morals of the Dutch and the Practices of the same kind whereof they have been Guilty in most parts of the World to which they have had Access or who hath observed in what other ways of Cozenage and Deceit they have bubbled and injured us in the matter of our Silver judg it unlikely that they should first Mint abroad and then palm upon us both false and light Mony seeing the much counterfeit Metal and the great quantites of true Mony only with aâ—atements of Weight which have been Coyn'd and Stampt by Villains among our selves do afford the Dutch so plausible a Cover and obvious a Maâ—k and Disguise for Cheating us in this way and manner that I have suggeffed and whereof the Nation hath been and still is so full of Clamour against them But which being so agreeable to the Inclinations and Designs which our Belgick Prince entertains towards
more without asking or taking their Advice about it though a matter both of great Importance in it self and of vast Consequence to the Trade of this Kingdom Nor can it be imagined that the said Act for erecting of a Scotch Company was surreptitiously obtained or precipitately passed without his Knowledg and Information of the Tenor of it Seeing the Instructions were formed and digested here and signed by him which upon being sent down thither gave occasion and encouragement there to make and enact such a Statute at this Juncture And it is highly worthy of remark That this Scotch Law containing so many unusual Privileges and beneficial Concessions as were never granted heretofore by any King of Great Britain should be made at a Season when the Trade of England is so loaded and depressed by late grievous Impositions and Taxes laid upon It by several Laws since the Revolution in order to the carrying on of the present War and for the defraying the Charges of it Nor is it conceivable how after so many Discouragements given to the English East India Company not only in refusing them an Establishment by Law but in Delaying for several Years to grant them a Confirmation of their Charter and thereby putting them both to vast Expenses through their being so long in soliciting of it and the leaving them all that while naked and exposed to be undermined and supplanted by Interlopers that this unwonted and exuberant Grace should be exercised to the Kingdom of Scotland were it not done upon the Influence of Dutch Councils and in pursuance of Measures from Holland for the ruining the Trade of England And whosoever considers the little respect and the less affection which King William hath for the Scots Nation and with what disdain and contempt he speaks oâ— that whole Kingdom and treats those of the first Quality of it will easily believe That he did not authorise the Establishment of the forementioned Company out of kindness unto or concern for the Prosperity of that Nation but that it was done upon the Motives and in pursuance of foreign Councils Not that I do envy the Scots any Favour that is shewed them upon whatsoever Inducements it be done or that I blame the Parliament of Scotland for what they have done in this particular towards the raising of the Genius and encouraging the Industry of their People to the pursuit of Trade but what I would say is That as King William's Kindness to the Scots in this matter is to the apparent and visible Damage of the English so it is morally certain that both the first overture of such an Establishment sprung from Belgick Councils and that the Prince of Orange's Instructions which led that Parliament to such a Bill and the Royal Assent given thereunto by his Commissioner upon which it is become a Law and Statute is all in order to encrease the Trade and raise the Grandeur of the Dutch and to depress and lessen the Trade of England and thereby to weaken and impoverish the Kingdom For as the Author of a Paper called Some Considerations upon the late Act of the Parliament of Scotland for constituting an Indian Company has with Candor and Ingenuity told us Pag. 4. That the Original of that Design of settling a Company of Commerce for Strangers as well as for Scotch-men was not from Scotland nor from hence but altogether from foreign Parts which as he there tells us he had from good hands So we have reason upon his Testimony to receive what he says being so avowed a Patron of the Wisdom Justice and Equity of the said Act. However it will not be amiss to unfold a little more distinctly what he hath only obscurely and briefly insinuated In the doing whereof I must crave pardon for revealing a Secret committed to me in a private Conversation and the rather because I have always valued my self upon an inviolable Fidelity toward all that have trusted me and upon a tenacious Retentiveness and steddy Secrecy in reference to such Things as have been privately and under the Notion of friendship conveyed to me But where my Discretion has only been confided in but neither my Honour nor my Conscience have been engaged I do judg that I not only may but that in Duty I ought to disclose what hath been and is contrived and machinated in order to divide and separate these two Kingdoms and thereby to weaken if not ruin both of them namely That the Dutchâ— being afraid that either through the Prince of Orange's Death or through King James's Restauration these Nations may be awakened to consider how they have been first deluded and misled and then wronged and injured by the Hollanders and thereupon may be provoked to demand Reparation and grow enraged to persue Revenge they have therefore studied and concerted how to separate the Kingdoms of England and Scotland the one from the other And have proceeded so far therein as in either of the foregoing Cases to have allowance for it from Willam's Dutch Minions and Confidents which is equivalent to the having it from himself And accordingly they have treated with some of the Scotch Nation about it whom they have not only gratified with Mony to make them pliable but have given them assurance That there shall be Three or Four hundred thousand Pound ready to bribe and gain the chief and most leading Men of that Kingdom to comply with this Design at what time it may be needful for the Dutch to have it put in execution In pursuance whereof they have started the Project of a Scotch East India Company which that Nation had all the reason in the World to take hold of and they will be thought not only kind but just to themselves in gaining this Grant and Concession from the Crown for their coming into the Interest of this Man at a Season when their adhering to their Rightful King as was their Duty to have done would have made this Man's Title very uncertain and precarious and would have rendered his Abode in and Reign over these Kingdoms of a very short Duration and Continuance Nor will it escape the recommending the Wisdom of the Scots Nation to Posterity That whilst the English who have lavished away and wasted near 40 Millions sterl upon their Dutch King have not obtained one Beneficial National Act or Law in recompence of all that they have so foolishly and prodigally bestowed for the support of his Government the Scots by taking the Benefit of his foreign Inclinations and Affections have gained something that may be useful to them and their Off-spring It were high Presumption in me to undertake to declare how far the Scots Act is directly calculated and adapted to the Prejudice of England seeing that were to invade the Province and to break into the Rights of both Houses of the Parliament of England who being extreamly sensible of and having maturely weighed it have not only the Integrity and Fortitude to represent it
Undertaking And it is a surprise to all thinking disinterested Men that Trade being the Source and Fountain of the Wealth Strength and Populace of a Nation and that this Kingdom being more adapted for it by its Situation Harbours and the Genius of its People than any other Country whatsoever that yet it should be so far from being encouraged in the way manner and degrees it ought that the Trade of England is more Clogged Loaded and has greater Burthens laid upon it than that of any other Nation But if this Method of counteracting the Scots should not be thought convenient when the Kingdom is to be charged with so many and large Grants of Mony to the Government for the upholding and carrying on the present War there is still another way of obviating all the Evils we are apprehensive of from the Scots Act and from the old East India Company yea and not only of defeating the Design of the Dutch who were the first and under-hand Advisers to it but of improving it into an Occation of strengthening our selves to chastise the Hollanders and to exact Reparations from them for all the Injuries of one kind and â—â—other which they have done us And that is the bringing these two Kingdoms into an Union of Councils Laws and Privileges of all Sorts as they are already united under one Monarch encompassed by the same Seas Inhabitants upon one Island and not differing in Language farther than in tone and dialect Which as it would be to the mutual Safety and Prosperity of both Nations so it is not to be questioned but that the Scots in consideration and acknowledgment of the Benefit that would accrue to them by an Incorporation with England would chearfully surrender their late Act and be as forward as we can wish to repeal it Nor would it be sound so difficult as some do imagine it to effect compass and perfect such an Union upon Terms that both Kingdoms may think equal could we on each side renounce national Piques and give up little private Interests in order to the obtaining a general common Good I am told that some are so ignorant and others so impudent as say That King William in virtue of that Sovereign Power which that Kingdom hath granted him may by his own personal and immediate Authority without the concurrence of a Parliament or the Prescription of a Law impose upon Trade what Duty Customs or Taxes he pleaseth and this they alledg to stand vested in him as a part of his Prerogative by the Gift and Concession of an Act of Parliament made in one of those Sessions when Launderdale was King Charles the Second's High Commissioner To which I reply three Things 1. That such a Supposition were to put all Traders of the Kingdom of Scotland into the state and condition of Slaves by making their whole Property acquirable by the way of Traffick to be under the protection of no Law but to be sâ—isable and disposable at the arbitrary Will and despotical Pleasure of the King which I think that Nation which justly boasts it self a free Kingdom as much as any other whatsoever will not easily acquiesce in and submit unto from any King But especially not from one of their own making who being as the Clay in their hands of which they have made a Vessel of Honour they may either break it or mould it again when the Humour takes them into a Vessel of Dishonour 2. Whatsoever Prerogative this Man under the Notion of being their King may have as to the laying Impositions upon Goods and Merchandise where no Law doth preclude and bar him from doing it and where the Concession Liberty and Right for them to trade to such and such Places and in such and such Commodities proceed and are derived meeâ—ly from his personal Grant and Charter which gives them all their Title so to do yet it is most absurd to imagine that he can have any such Prerogative or Power where a publick Law hath given them both a Right and Authority to trade and an Immunity from all Impositions whatsoever in reference to such Places and the Productions and Superfluities thereof and it is also Tyranny in him to challenge it For by this means no Laws can be a Fence about Mens Estates and Properties nor give them the Security which they both promise and were made and enacted for the ensuring to them And for King William to claim and exercise such a Jurisdiction and Authority were to usurp a dispensing Power that is both infinitely worse in it self and more fatal in its consequences than that for which we so much blamed and have hostily treated King James Seeing all the dispensing Power King James challenged was only in reference to penal Laws and those also relative meerly to Religious Matters as to both which the King has a greater extent and latitude of Jurisdiction inherent in him by reason of his Sovereign Power than he hath in reference to other Laws But should King William take upon him to dispense with the Act we are speaking of it were to usurp a dispensing Power both in reference to beneficial Laws and those made for the protection of our Civil Rights Properties and Estates which all Men who have common Sense know to be more out of the verge and reach of Kings to supercede and controle than those are which refer to Ecclesiastical Officers and which are likewise of a penal Nature 3. Should it be admitted that by that Act of Lauderdale's Parliament an absolute unlimitted and despotical Authority became vested in King Charles and stood conveyed to King James in relation to this laying Taxes and Impositions on Trade yet no Power of this kind accrues by this Act to King William in that it was complained of as one of the Grievances which were presented to him antecedently to his having Crown conferred upon him and whereof Redress only was demanded But it was stipulated and made a part of the Original Contract betwixt the Kingdom of Scotland and Him That no such Power as Lauderdale's Act imported should ever be claimed or exercised over them And for King William now to pretend to it were not only to violate his Coronation Oath and proclaim himself perjured to all the World but it were to discharge that Nation from all Obligation of Fealty to him and to give them a legal Right as well as Cause to proceed to the deposing and abdicating him Before I shut up this Discourse which the variety and importance of the matter has already made longer than I at first designed it though I hope it will not be found tedious I shall for the sake of many Thousands as well as my own humbly applying my self to the Senate of the Kingdom to the Members of the Privy Council and to the Gentlemen of both the Gowns for their resolving me Two or Three Questions which it is of great Concernment with respect to our Constitution our Laws our Religâ—on and our Consciences
Uses then those of Commerce and in much greater Quantities than Traffick could have ever required its being carried abroad for Though all the Misery and Mischief that do by these means befal and overtake us are all chargeable upon and to be laid at the Door of our Dutch King Seeing that of transporting it has been the natural and unavoidable effect of his ascent to the Throne and of the War that thereupon he engaged us in and especially of those ways which he has designedly chosen and persued in support of it And then as to the Clipping and Embasing our Mony none can be reasonably accused either of causing or conniving at it but the Prince of Orange who has occasioned and encouraged it by his weak and improvident Administration For both these Practices which do eventually and in the Effects of them prove so ruinous to the Kingdom having obtained in no other Reigns in any proportion and degree to what they have done in his as it is commonly stiled they must consequently be resolved into some Neglect Weakness or Treachery in his Adminâ—stration whereof no other Reigns were guilty or accusable Nor will it excuse him to have it alledged That more have been executed for those Crimes since his usurping of the Throne than were in an Age before Seeing though some of the little and indigent Creatures whom necessity tempted to it and which necessity he brought upon them have been condemned and executed yet your Goldsmiths and Refiners who both bought the Clippings and who at mighty Gain furnished them with broad Mony for continuing the Crime have not only escaped Prosecutions which by Law they deserved but divers of them have been the special Favourites and Confidents of the Government And to mention but one of many I will be bold to say the hanging of Evans the Goldsmith who infinitely more deserves it for melting down and carrying abroad our Coin to satisfy his Covetousness and make Profit by what was our milled Mony than any of the Clippers and false Minters have done would have given greater check unto and have been a more effectual Remedy even of the Crimes of these later than all the Convictions and Executions for Offences of that kind since the Revolution which we have seen but have found no benefit by But instead of that he hath been honoured and preferred by our Dutch Bestower of Titles and Disposer of Places to be both a Knight and a Commissioner of the Excise though a Fellow void of all Merit and destitute of good Sense and whom only Knavery Impudence and the Emptying the Kingdom of our Silver by carrying it to Holland to enrich the Dutch have entitled to his Master's Favour And I crave Liberty to say en passant though it may seem alien to the subject That I have often wondered why our Kings and Parliaments should fall upon so ineffectual a Remedy of those Crimes as the making them Capital will continue to prove in a Nation where Men are sunk into so much Irreligion and Atheism and which the many Villanes attending and wrapt up in the Revolution have encreased and strengthned as to dread Death less than Poverty and to chuse Damnation as well as Hanging and Quartering rather than want Supplies for the Feeding and for the Maintenance of their Lasciviousness and Luxury Seeing when our Mony was both Pure and Sterling and of full Weight as it was generally at the Revolution the bare imposing and exacting of a Mulct of Five or Ten Pounds upon every one that should have been found offering either Clipt or False Mony to another would have deterred all Men from venturing upon it and obviated both the forementioned Crimes and likewise the woful Effects of them And possibly it would be no ill Policy to do in this Case as the Lacedemonians did in that of Theft which when they thought not fit to prevent and hinder by punishing the Thieves they effectually suppressed it by rendering those liable to a considerable Penalty that should have any Thing stolen from them So may be the inflicting of a Mulct upon every one that should take either light or base Mony would soon cause that there would be no Offerers of it by reason there would be none found so unkind and unjust to themselves as to receive it But to return from this Digression I do say that the Dutch besides all the Injuries they have done us and the Spoils they have committed upon us with respect to our Trade in the forementioned Methods which I have been displaying they have also in divers other Ways and in several Instances either craftily supplanted or directly invaded and forceably assaulted us in our Commerce and Traffick since the late Revolution which I shall presume now to lay open as far as the brevity of this Discourse will allow and shall discover how and wherein they have done so And I shall begin with the Advantage they have had of protecting their own Trade and of exposing and leaving ours open to be ruined by reason of that small and unequal Quota and Proportion of Ships of War that in respect of our much greater Number of Ships of that kind they supply and furnish to the forming and constituting the Confederate and United Fleet of both Nations which is the more remarkable in that their Number of Land Forces is not much encreased towards the support of the present War above what it use to be in time of Peace Yea it is hardly so great now as then if we consider that all the Contributions raised in the Province of Namur and on the French Conquests go for the Ease of their Establishment and that the vast Sums spent in Flanders by the whole Confederate Army becomeâ— theirs and Centerâ— in Holland However it bears no proportion with ours according to the State of the War for the Year 1696. which as the Earl of Renelagh by King William's Order gave it into the House of Commons Decemb. 3. amounts to 87440 Men whereas if it were not to defend the Provinces of these stiled our Allies a very few Forces would be sufficient for our Occasions at home if it should not be found needless to have any at all Whereas they in the times of the profoundest Peace are seldom without Fifty thousand Men to which their supernumerary Addition now is but inconsiderable if what I have said be well considered and provided that we also observe that divers of those Troops reckoned into their Quota are upon English Establishment and paid with our Mony Indeed if we had charged our selves with furnishing the whole marine Power both for us and them and stood thereby excused for affording any Land Forces to be employed in Flanders or elsewhere upon any part of the Continent I should not have blamed the Conduct of requiring a few Men of War from them yea should not have much complained if they had been acquitted from the yielding any Seeing such a Stipulation and Agreement between us