the members thought that when that question was settled, the club
should go on and take up others. George Dempster of Dunnichen, for
example, an old and respected parliamentary hand of that time, wrote
Dr. Carlyle in 1762 that when they got their militia, they ought to
agitate for parliamentary reform, "so as to let the industrious farmer
and manufacturer share at last in a privilege now engrossed by the
great lord, the drunken laird, and the drunkener baillie."[100] But
they never got the length of considering other reforms, for the
militia question was not settled in that generation. It outlived the
Poker Club, and it outlived the Younger Poker Club which was enrolled
to take up the cause in 1786, and it was not finally settled till
1793.

The Scotch had been roused to the defenceless condition of their
country by the alarming appearance of Thurot in Scotch waters in 1759,
and had instantly with one voice raised a cry for the establishment of
a national militia. The whole country seemed to have set its mind on
this measure with a singular unanimity, and a bill for its enactment
was accordingly introduced into the House of Commons in 1760 by two of
the principal Scotch members, both former ministers of the
Crown--James Oswald and Gilbert Elliot; but it was rejected by a large
majority, because within only fifteen years of the Rebellion the
English members were unwilling to entrust the Scotch people with arms.
The rejection of the bill provoked a deep feeling of national
indignation, the slur it cast on the loyalty of Scotland being
resented even more than the indifference it showed to her perils. It
was under the influence of this wave of national sentiment that the
Poker Club was founded in 1762, to procure for the Scotch at once
equality of rights with the English and adequate defences for their
country.

The membership of the club included many of the foremost men in the
land--great noblemen, advocates, men of letters, together with a
number of spirited county gentlemen on both sides of politics, who
cried that they had a militia of their own before the Union, and must
have a militia of their own again. Dr. Carlyle says most of the
members of the Select Society belonged to it, the exceptions
consisting of a few who disapproved of the militia scheme, and of
others, like the judges, who scrupled, on account of their official
position, to take any part in a political movement. Carlyle gives a
list of the members i