is principally due to the obvious fact that the Scots are notrnfighting for any Scottish cause; we do not enjoy national independence,rnnor is the liberty of Scotland among the war-aims orrnpeace-projects of the British and allied governments. . . . Nornintelligent Scot, of any age or sex, has any confidence in thernBritish government; of the less intelligent Scots, at presentrnsomewhat numerous from various causes, more, in my judgment,rnhave confidence in the government of the Soviet Unionrnthan have confidence in the British government (although I amrnfar from suggesting their confidence is well placed).”rnOn April 23, 1942, Douglas came before Sheriff Sam Mac-rnDonald on a complaint of the Procurator Fiscal that he hadrncontravened the National Service (Armed Forces) Act of 1939.rnDouglas argued a series of alternatives: that the Act was contraryrnto the Common Law of Scotland, which the Treaty ofrnUnion protected; that the Treaty of Union did not grant thernBritish Parliament the right to draft Scotsmen; that the socalledrnBritish Parliament was in fact the English Parliament;rnthat Great Britain had voided the Treaty of Union and as headrnof the Commonwealth of Nations was no longer an entity inrninternational law, “since it had no exclusive undisputed controlrnover all persons and things in its pretended territory, did notrnconduct its external relations independently of the will of allrnother states and did not give sufficient expectation of its permanence.”rnSheriff MacDonald listened to Douglas’s arguments, congratulatedrnhim on his learning, and regretted that he saw nornsecond way but to sentence him to 12 months in prison. Douglasrnappealed to the High Court of the Justiciary and was freedrnon bail. In honor of his stand, he was elected Chairman of thernHigh Council of the SNP, a position he held until 1945. On Julyrn9, 1942, he addressed to the High Court an hour-and-a-halfrnversion of his four objections. The court ignored all four and,rnin dismissing his appeal, ascribed to Douglas the contention,rn”All the acts of the Imperial Parliament since 1707 were voidrnand of no effect,” which he had not said. His legal objectionsrnwere never adjudicated and, significantly, the proceedingsrnwere never published. He served eight months in prison (Julyrn9, 1942 to March 10, 1943) and was released early for goodrnbehavior. Sodey MacLean wrote from Egypt that the only twornplaces to be during the war were fighting the Nazis, as he wasrndoing, or fighting the English, like Douglas. (He comparedrnW.H. Auden, who had fled to safety at little SwarthmorernCollege in the United States.)rnDouglas emerged from prison, took a wife, and, as soon as hisrnhoneymoon was over, started contesting a by-election (held inrnFebruary 1944) in Kirkcaldy Burghs in his native Fife county.rnHe promised the voters that if elected he would work to givernScotland dominion status through a bill modeled on the BritishrnNorth America Act of 1867, which had created the Dominionrnof Canada. The Labour candidate, who supported Churchill’srncoalition government, expected little opposition from eitherrnDouglas or a pacifist who was running as a Christian Socialist.rnThe Labourite won with 52 percent of the vote (8,268 votes),rnwhile 42 percent (6,621) voted for Douglas, a far cry from thernvirtual unanimity of which we hear in official accounts ofrnWorld War II. There was an explosion in the Cabinet. ErnestrnBevin, the powerful head of the Transport and General WorkersrnUnion, a Labourite who was ChurchilFs Minister of Labour,rninsisted on beginning a new prosecution against Douglas, thisrntime for opposing industrial conscription.rnIn the meantime, Douglas was obtaining the signatures ofrnthe prime ministers of the various Dominions in favor ofrndominion status for Scotland. Most signed, including “thernLiberal Mackenzie King, of Canada, and the Gaelic-speakingrnSocialist Peter Fraser, of South Africa.” One month after thernby-election, the Ministry of Labour summoned Douglas to berninterviewed for a job in a munitions factory and proceededrnagainst him, when, as expected, he refused. At the Sheriff-rnCourt in Paisley on June 12, 1944, his case was heard “by arnrather deaf and testy old gentleman, who kept interrupting andrnseemed not to understand what was said to him,” Sheriff-SubstituternA.M. Hamilton.rnDouglas made several points. First, whatever the purportedrnomnipotence of the British parliament over Englishmen, its authorityrnin Scotland was limited by the Treaty of Union of 1707,rnwhich was meant to restrain the power of the central government,rnlike the United States Constitution. Second, ArticlernXVIII of the Treaty of Union explicitly preserved ScottishrnCommon Law in the area of private right. This was relevant tornmilitary conscription, but was crucial in the case of the innovationrnof industrial conscription. Douglas cited two parallel casesrnfrom English and Scottish law, where two Negroes assertedrntheir freedom before English and Scottish courts. The Scottishrncourt in 1779 found that villeinage, serfdom, did not exist underrnScottish law and freed the man. The English courts in 1707rnfound that villeinage was part of English law and refused to freernthe slave. Industrial conscription was English Law applied tornScotland, in violation of the Treaty of Union. On May 25,rn1944, the Supreme Court of New South Wales, Australia,rnbanned industrial conscription because it “imposed on thernpeople the status of villeinage.”rnThird, Douglas argued that Pariiament had no right to “delegatedrnlegislation,” that is, to give to administrative bodies,rnsuch as the Ministry of Labour, the power to create and enforcerntheir own laws. This last point is still important to us becausernthe limitations the United States Constitution imposed on therncentral government have been circumvented by creating bureaucraciesrnwhich are free to make, interpret, and enforce theirrnown law. Douglas praised Hayek’s recent Road to Serfdom andrndenounced Socialists who wanted to keep industrial conscriptionrnafter the war in the cause of full employment. “The sloganrnof Full Employment,” he argued, “is appropriate only to arnServile State.” The Ministry of Labour’s treatment of youngrnScottish women and Douglas himself showed the dangers ofrnsuch a system.rnDouglas was found guilty and sentenced to three months inrnjail. He appealed again to the High Court, arguing that bothrnthe act instituting industrial conscription and the enforcementrnof the act by the Ministry of Labor violated Article XVIII of thernTreaty of Union. On October 6, 1944, the Court affirmed thernearlier High Court ruling that Douglas was denying the validityrnof all acts of the British parliament since 1707. The Lord Justice-rnClerk (Lord Cooper) interrupted Douglas with a series ofrnquestions until, by a slip of the tongue, he assented to that denial.rnHaving confused Douglas into contradicting his own writtenrnappeal. Lord Cooper sent him to prison for three months,rnwithout hearing the appeal. There was much resentment ofrnthe government’s actions, even among those who disagreedrnwith Douglas’s stand against military conscription, since it wasrnclear that he was being harassed because of his good showing atrnthe by-election.rn”The question raised,” Douglas later wrote, “was, of course,rnthat of federal constitutionalism, a question perfectly familiarrnNOVEMBER 1995/29rnrnrn