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, citizens and/or subjects:
“Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations. Without internal peace, that is, peace among citizens and between the citizens and the state, there can be no guarantee of external peace.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)
“If we are to take for the criterion of truth the majority of suffrages, they ought to be gotten from those philosophic and patriotic citizens who cultivate their reason.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“Some subjects come up suddenly in our speech and cannot be silenced.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)