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OF THE NOBILITY OF SCOTLAND.

The king makes three great divisions of the Scottish people:  the church, the nobility, and the burghers.

Of the nobility, the king counsels the prince to check

“A fectless arrogant conceit of their greatness and power, drinking in with their very nourish-milk.  Teach your nobilitie to keep your lawes, as precisely as the meanest; fear not their orping, or being discontented, as long as ye rule well:  for their pretended reformation of princes taketh never effect, but where evil government proceedeth.  Acquaint yourself so with all the honest men of your barone and gentlemen, giving access so open and affable, to make their own suites to you themselves, and not to employ the great lordes, their intercessours; so shall ye bring to a measure their monstrous backes.  And for their barbarous feides (feuds), put the laws to due execution made by mee there-anent; beginning ever rathest at him that yee love best, and is oblished vnto you, to make him an example to the rest.  Make all your reformations to begin at your elbow, and so by degrees to the extremities of the land.”

He would not, however, that the prince should highly contemn the nobility:  “Remember, howe that error brake the king, my grandfather’s heart.  Consider that vertue followeth oftest noble blood:  the more frequently that your court can be garnished with them, as peers and fathers of your land, thinke it the more your honour.”

He impresses on the mind of the prince ever to embrace the quarrel of the poor and the sufferer, and to remember the honourable title given to his grandfather, in being called “The poor man’s king.”

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OF COLONISING.

James I. had a project of improving the state of those that dwelt in the isles, “who are so utterly barbarous,” by intermixing some of the semi-civilised Highlanders, and planting colonies among them of inland subjects.

“I have already made laws against the over-lords, and the chief of their clannes, and it would be no difficultie to danton them; so rooting out, or transporting the barbarous and stubborn sort, and planting civilised in their rooms.”

This was as wise a scheme as any modern philosopher could have suggested, and, with the conduct he subsequently pursued in Ireland, may be referred to as splendid proofs of the kingly duties so zealously performed by this monarch.

* * * * *

OF MERCHANTS.

Of merchants, as this king understood the commercial character, he had no honourable notion.

He says, “They think the whole commonwealth ordained for raising them up, and accounting it their lawful gain to enrich themselves upon the losses of the rest of the people.”

We are not to censure James I. for his principles of political economy, which then had not assumed the dignity of a science; his rude and simple ideas convey popular truths.