y for the freedom and independence of these
islands but in the valour and patriotism of an armed people";[102]
and when, during his travels in Switzerland in 1775, he saw for the
first time in his life a real militia--the object of his
dreams--actually moving before him in the flesh, and going through
their drill, his heart came to his mouth, and he wrote his friend
Carlyle: "As they were the only body of men I ever saw under arms on
the true principle for which arms should be carried, I felt much
secret emotion, and could have shed tears."[103] He was deeply
disappointed a year later with Smith's apostasy on this question, or
at least opposition, for Ferguson makes no accusation of apostasy.
After reading the _Wealth of Nations_, he wrote Smith on the 18th of
April 1776: "You have provoked, too, so far the Church, the
universities, and the merchants, against all of whom I am willing to
take your part; but you have likewise provoked the militia, and there
I must be against you. The gentlemen and peasants of this country do
not need the authority of philosophers to make them supine and
negligent of every resource they might have in themselves in the case
of certain extremities, of which the pressure, God knows, may be at no
great distance. But of this more at Philippi."[104]

But many others besides Smith had in this interval either found their
zeal for a militia grown cool or their opinion of its value modified,
and when Lord Mountstuart introduced his new Scotch Militia Bill in
1776, it received little support from Scotch members, and its
rejection excited nothing like the feeling roused by the rejection of
its predecessor in 1760, although it was attended this time with the
galling aggravation that what was refused to the Scotch was in the
same hour granted to the Irish, then the less disliked and distrusted
nation of the two. Opinions had grown divided. Old Fletcher of
Saltoun's idea of a citizen army with universal compulsory service
was still much discussed, but many now objected to the compulsion, and
others, among whom was Lord Kames, to the universality of the
compulsion, rallying to the idea of Fencibles--_i.e._ regiments to be
raised compulsorily by the landed proprietors, each furnishing a
number of men proportioned to their valued rent.[105] Smith said a
militia formed in this way, like the old Highland militia, was the
best of all militias, but he held that the day was past for militias
of men with one han