He also deplored the effect of London's relative size, which he said would inevitably draw an accelerating proportion of wealth and decision-making to the south-east corner of Britain.

At this time, Fletcher was a member of the opposition Country Party in the Scottish Parliament, where he resolutely opposed any arbitrary actions on the part of the Church or state.

Fletcher wanted to strike at the country militia while they were being formed up, and appropriated a fine horse belonging to the leading local sympathizer, Thomas Dare, who was shot dead when he became threatening in the ensuing argument.

Hurt national pride had led to many Scots blaming the scheme's failure on the hostility of England to it, and Fletcher and the Country party seized the opportunity to promote increased Scottish self-reliance.

His limitations were: Although the limitations did not pass the house, something little short of them was passed, the Act of Security 1704 (c.3 (S)), which made provisions in case of the Queen's death, with the conditions under which the successor to the throne of England was to be allowed to succeed to that of Scotland, which were to be, "at least, freedom of navigation, free communication of trade, and liberty of the plantations to the kingdom and subjects of Scotland, established by the parliament of England."

Arthur L. Herman in How the Scots Invented the Modern World describes Fletcher as a genuine intellectual, but regards his vision for Scotland as retrograde.

Alasdair MacIntyre has written, "Almost alone among his contemporaries Fletcher understood the dilemma confronting Scotland as involving more radical alternatives than they were prepared to entertain.

"[3] His chief works are A Discourse of Government relating to Militias[4] (1698), in which he argued that the royal army in Scotland should be replaced by local militias, a position of civic republican virtue which was to return a half-century later and foreshadowed the thinking of Adam Ferguson in lauding martial virtues over commercially minded polite society, which Fletcher thought enervating.

Two Discourses concerning the Affairs of Scotland (1698), in which he discussed the problems of Scottish trade and economics; and An Account of a Conversation concerning a right regulation of Governments for the common good of Mankind (1703).

[5] In Two Discourses he suggested that the numerous vagrants who infested Scotland should be brought into compulsory and hereditary servitude, it was already the case that criminals or the dissolute were transported to the colonies and sold as virtual slaves at that time.