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masons, the Council took a still more remarkable step in the path of progress: it expended £68, 6s. 8d. in importing a number of Flemish weavers, dyers, and fullers, with their families and settling them in the town for the prosecution of their several crafts. From these data it will be seen with what slow and hesitating steps Scotland was following the lead of England in breaking away from the bondage of the mediæval economy, and we can understand the force of the advice which James VI. gave to his son in the Basilicon Doron. "But for their part" (that is, the part of the Scottish craftsmen), he writes, "take example by England, how it hath flourished both in wealth and policie since the strangers craftesman came in among them. Therefore, not only permit, but allure strangers to come here also; taking a straite order for the mutining of ours at them, as was done in England at their first in-bringing there." "

What causes are we to assign for the backwardness of Scotland in breaking away from the traditions of medievalism? The political unrest of the country might at first sight seem a sufficiently adequate explanation. But there is conclusive evidence that throughout all the tumultuous reign of Mary the towns followed the even tenor of their way, and, to the extent of their resources, did what they could to develop both their home and foreign. trade. It is when we turn to England that we find the true explanation of the sluggishness of Scotland

in entering on the new paths of commercial development. What What gave an impetus to English commerce and transformed all its methods was the increase of capital which was pressing for outlet in every direction. In the new conditions created by the comparative abundance of money, the time-honoured restrictions on trade and industry went to the ground by a simple and natural process. We have just seen how the jealous exclusiveness of the crafts was broken down in the reigns of Edward VI. and his immediate successors; and in home and foreign trade the revolution was equally manifest. While Scotland was doing battle as vigorously as in the Middle Ages against regrating and forestalling, the conditions which created these crimes had for England virtually ceased to exist. When trade became free to all who chose to pursue it, the regrater and the forestaller died a natural death. In the case of foreign trade we see the same contrast between the policies of the two countries. In Scotland the hard-and-fast regulations which had bound the mediæval merchant were as rigidly enforced as ever, whereas in England the door was virtually thrown open to all and sundry who might desire to put their capital to profitable uses. While in England flourishing companies were pushing their trade beyond Europe to other continents, foreign trade in Scotland was following the old beaten track, and we have to descend to the close of the seventeenth century before we find her

embarking on a commercial enterprise which first excited the jealousy of her more fortunate neighbour-the ill-starred enterprise of Darien.

It is in the lack of capital, therefore, that we must find the find the explanation of the prolonged mediævalism of the industrial and commercial conditions of Scotland. That in the sixteenth century capital should still be scanty in Scotland need not excite our wonder. Her population could not have been much over 500,000, and a considerable section of that population were addicted to modes of life which, to put it moderately, did not tend to increase the wealth of the country. Her ancient feud with England rendered mutual commercial relations with that country at all times precarious and unprofitable, while her remoteness from the Continent in an age when navigation was attended by so many hazards, put her at a serious disadvantage in all foreign trade. Above all, she had to contend with a soil and climate and surface which in the earlier stages of a nation's history present the gravest impediments in the development of its resources. It cannot, therefore, be attributed to any lack of strenuousness in the Scottish people that in the sixteenth century they were behind more favoured nations alike in the theory and practice of commerce and industry. When in due time the progress of the mechanical arts enabled them to contend successfully with the natural disadvantages of their environment, it was

to be brilliantly proved that only the opportunity had been wanting in order that they should hold their own in the rivalry of the nations.

In another sphere of economics Scotland followed the example of other countries with the same hesitating steps. One of the problems that engaged the attention of states in the first half of the sixteenth century was the ever-increasing number of "sturdy beggars" and impotent poor. From every country we have the same complaint of the multiplication of both these classes of persons. Previous to the Reformation there had been endless legislation for the removal or lessening of this evil, but it was on the Church that had lain the burden of coping with it. In the view of churchmen and laymen alike this was, indeed, one of the chief functions to which it was called by its divine institution, but by the period of the Reformation the Church had become unwilling or unable to discharge its trust. From all sides we have the same protest that the proportion of the tithes which should have been allocated to the poor was retained by the priests for their own uses. The hospitals which had been expressly founded as asylums for the indigent and the sick were converted into comfortable benefices for churchmen. The bitter outcry in the "Beggars' Summonds" against the prostitution of these foundations was heard in England, France, and Germany as well as in Scotland. So far as the Church was concerned, it was mainly in

the monasteries that charity maintained its abode. At these houses the wandering beggar and the native poor equally found relief. As is well known, the suppression of the religious houses in England was attended by a degree of misery which legislators long vainly sought to alleviate. In Scotland there is no indication that the misery of the poor was materially increased by the fall of the ancient Church. Alike from the legislation of Parliaments and Town Councils we are led to infer that beggars of all classes were as numerous before as after the Reformation.

The great defect of medieval charity had been indiscriminate almsgiving which, while it afforded temporary relief, only aggravated the evil it should have been its object to cure. The problem that now called for solution, therefore, was at once the relief of the deserving poor and the suppression of the incorrigible beggar. In the first half of the sixteenth century thinkers and statesmen were equally engaged in devising means to effect both of these ends. Among the thinkers was our own John Major, who, though an obscurantist in speculative philosophy, had a singularly open mind in social and political questions. In an incidental remark in his Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard he gave expression to an opinion which attracted general attention as adumbrating a new policy in the treatment of the poor. "If the prince or community," he writes, "should decree