Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun (1653-1716) was one of the most acute observers of the European political order of his time, and an important forerunner of the Scottish Enlightenment. Famous in his own day and since for his patriotic opposition to the Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707, Fletcher was an admirer of the ancients and a student of Machiavelli, who would adapt Machiavelli's strictly political concepts of a world increasingly shaped by commerce. His...