Citizens and Subjects
By 1606 James's dream of an Imperial British Crown was looking sickly. The Union Commission made some limited progress, but only by setting the big picture to one side, concentrating instead on the seemingly more manageable issues like hostile border laws, trade and citizenship. The borders were to become the 'middle shires', as if history could be sidestepped by semantics. But the issues of free trade proved highly contentious, threatening powerful economic interest groups, as did the issue of equal rights before the law. It was to be, in essence, the immigration debate of the day. Fears were openly expressed in Parliament that English jobs would be threatened by all the poor people of the realm of Scotland, who will 'draw near to the Sonn, and flocking hither in such Multitudes, that death and dearth is very probable to ensue.' The exact status of the post nati, those born after the Union of March 1603, was never to be decided by Parliament. In the end the deadlock had to be broken by the courts in 1608 in Calvin's Case, involving the baby Robert Calvin, which extended property rights to the King's subjects (i.e. the Scots) in English common law.
Read more about this topic: Union Of The Crowns
Famous quotes containing the words citizens and/or subjects:
“It is not enough that France should be regarded as a country which enjoys the remains of a freedom acquired long ago. If she is still to count in the world—and if she does not intend to, she may as well perish—she must be seen by her own citizens and by all men as an ever-flowing source of liberty. There must not be a single genuine lover of freedom in the whole world who can have a valid reason for hating France.”
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)