This request to the Privy Council for authority to ship beggars and other undesirables such as prostitutes and gypsies out of sight shows what some Scots thought, not only of social outcasts but also of the newly colonized plantations in the West Indies.
Supplication by George Hutcheson, merchant in Edinburgh, for himself and in name and behalf of his copartners, merchants of the ship bounding for Jamaica and Barbados, as follows: Out of a desire to promote the Scottish and English plantations in Jamaica and Barbados for the honour of their country, as well as to free the kingdom of the burden of many strong and idle beggars, Egyptians, common and notorious whores and thieves and other dissolute and loose persons banished or stigmatized for gross crimes, they have been by former acts of Council authorized to seize upon such persons and transport them to the said plantations; and though of late they have by warrant from the sheriffs, justices of peace and magistrates by burghs where the said persons haunt, apprehends some of them, yet without authority of the Council they may meet with some opposition in this good work. The Lords, having considered the petition, grant warrant to the petitioned to transport all such persons delivered to them by the magistrates, providing always that you bring the said persons before the Lord Justice Clerk, to whom it is hereby recommended to try and take notice of the persons that they be justly convicted for crimes or such vagabonds as by the laws of the country may be apprehended to the effect the country may be disburdened of them.