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:
“Thus your fathers were made
Fellow citizens of the saints, of the household of GOD, being built upon the foundation
Of apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself the chief cornerstone.
But you, have you built well, that you now sit helpless in a ruined house?”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“Under the dominion of an idea, which possesses the minds of multitudes, as civil freedom, or the religious sentiment, the power of persons are no longer subjects of calculation. A nation of men unanimously bent on freedom, or conquest, can easily confound the arithmetic of statists, and achieve extravagant actions, out of all proportion to their means; as, the Greeks, the Saracens, the Swiss, the Americans, and the French have done.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)