under the pain of tinsel of their lives and gudes." The spirit of this act was repeated in many succeeding ones, though it is not difficult to see that they were opposed to the feelings of many in the community. No The precise and artificial manner in which the guildries were latterly called into existence made the entire social life of burgh towns consist in an observance of complex laws, which brought towns and craftsmen into frequent conflict with each other, and led to all the other evils which over-legislation invariably produces. It was not so much the mischievous minuteness of the system that made it objectionable, for when an impost is to be levied on an article of trade it is generally advisable to have it done with exactness. But the meddlesome burgh legislation of the seventeenth century was defective in the very place where strictness was requisite. It crippled the merchant who was disposed to protect the law, but it was powerless in restraining the fraudulent practices of those who were neither citizens nor burgesses. Hence, there are no class of entries in the burgh records of the time so numerous as those which relate to "forestalling," "regratting," and "trading with unfreemen." offences were so common-few were dealt with so unsatisfactorily. The duties which fell naturally within the sphere of a local magistracy were discharged promptly and uprightly; not that they were always successful in keeping the peace, but they discreetly used such power as they possessed for that end. In a state of society which compelled every man to have a halbert in his booth, it need excite no surprise that acts of turbulence were frequent and serious. was the case throughout most of the burghs in Scotland, and neither swift nor heavy punishment seemed at one time to avail. A portion of the time which magistrates could spare from the more important work of regulating trade would appear to have been spent in the equally unprofitable task of trying witches. The initiatory proceedings against these unfortunate creatures were generally taken by the council, and if they found the "common bruit" established, a commission was appointed to try the verity thereof, with the almost invariable result of a conviction, and an execution. It Probably the most trying period in the history of the Royal Burghs of Scotland was embraced by the century extending from the Union of the Crowns to the Union of the Parliaments. Legislation like that we have sketched gradually diverted any little foreign trade the country had to more genial and open southern ports. The internal trade was not only small, but there was a civil war raging that made it uncertain. No class in the social scale had as yet filled up the places made vacant by the destruction of the old Church and the removal of the Court. Burghs of regality began to encroach on the old monopolies, and by 1672 their pretensions to share in the trade of the country were formally recognised by an act of parliament.1 Availing themselves of the imperfect control of the Crown, and with the not unnatural desire of freeing themselves as much as possible from individual taxation, the royal burghs had now recourse to a disastrous system of alienating the common good, or letting it out on long leases, at sums much below the proper value. "Special grants or licenses of subinfeudation," says Mr. Thomson, in his General Report, "were obtained by some; and emboldened by such precedents the magistrates of other burghs would appear to have acted at last on the supposition that the former restraints of the common law were relaxed, if not entirely abrogated, and that the alienation in feu-farm of the common property of burghs had become a part of their ordinary administration."2 So far was this 1 Act Par. Scot. vol. viii., p. 63. 2 In regard to the actual state of the real property conferred on or intrusted to the royal burghs of Scotland, ample illustration will be found in the Reports of the Commission presented to Parliament in 1835. In the general report it is stated that with comparatively few exceptions the administration of the property had been most unfortunate and even ruinous; and what was originally bestowed by the Crown, for public purposes, and inalienably devoted to the support of municipal establishments, has, in the greater number of cases, been lost by management the most reckless and shortsighted. Prior to the beginning of the sixteenth century, there is no trace of any dilapidation of the property of burghs. If waste of any kind existed, it must have been confined to the annual produce of the common property; and the property itself would appear to have been sufficiently protected by the inalienable quality of the original gift. In the larger burghs, at least, the ordinary system of management was by leases of short endurance, sometimes from year to year, and not of more than five years. Leases for longer periods were considered as alienations, and as such were liable to challenge; and of this some instances are to be found in the judicial proceedings of the supreme civil courts, in the latter part of the fifteenth century. On this ground, for example, a lease of one of the salmon fisheries, belonging to the burgh of Aberdeen, granted for a period of 19 years, was reduced and set aside. Such attempts to violate the strict obligations under which burghal property was to be administered, appear, however, to have then been rare. In tracing the origin and progress of a different system, in reference to burgh property, it is easy to perceive that it was very similar to what had begun to prevail in the management of the property of the Crown and of the Church; which, being also strictly inalienable, could not be made further available to the wants of the immediate holders but by an increase of its annual produce. As the accomplishment of this object, by any real improvement in the productive powers of the soil, was not then contemplated as a possible event, the more obvious expedient was resorted to of obtaining an increase of rental, in return for a more secure and permanent title of possession; and, for that purpose, the plan of converting temporary leases into perpetual and real rights of feu-farm tenure, in return for a feu-duty exceeding the amount of an ordinary rent, very readily presented itself. Neither in the case of ecclesiastical property, holden in mortmain, nor in that of burgage property, would this have been considered as a legitimate exercise of the powers of administration; but the immediate acquisition of an increased revenue, unaccom carried, that during the reign of Charles II. it became doubtful whether the burghs would ever again be able to bear their share of public burdens. In 1691, even Glasgow supplicated the Convention that it had "become altogether incapable of subsistence in regard to those heavy burdens that lie thereupon, occasioned by the vast sums that have been borrowed by the late magistrates, and the misapplying and dilapidation of the town's patrimony in suffering their debts to swell, and employing the common store for their own sinstrous ends and uses." A few years earlier, Cromarty, once possessed of wide properties, petitioned Parliament to be relieved from the dignity of a royal burgh, because it had become "depopulate and dispeopled." The Parliament granted the prayer of the petition, and ordered the name of Cromarty to be erased from the rolls of Parliament.1 West Anstruther was in a similar state, but happened to retain its dignity as the other burghs would not take upon themselves its share of the land tax. Auchtermuchty, Earlsferry, Falkland and Newburgh-all in Fife-were so far the same that they had ceased before the Union to send any member to parliament, and were in consequence excluded from the scheme of representation then framed. Roxburgh, too, "the curb and guardian of this border land," a burgh famous from the times that burghs were known— a royal residence with its mint, and goldsmiths, and markets, and churches-not only disappears from the rolls of Parliament, but absolutely ceases to exist. Were it not, as has been remarked, for the evidence derived from history, charters, and other documents, it might be doubted whether a powerful city ever flourished on the fields now occupied by the grazier and the husbandman.2 The fact of its being the battle ground of Scotch and English for many centuries, accounts sufficiently for the decay of Roxburgh; but with the others mentioned there could be no such defence. They were created to promote trade, and destroyed it. Inverbervie, to be sure, had been founded by David II. more out of pious gratitude for deliverance from shipwreck than any other feeling; but as a local rhyme, more remarkable for its plainness than anything else, puts it, the place never succeeded, and it was panied, as it should seem, with any suspicions of its permanent value, appears to have been regarded as a sufficient reason for granting to royal burghs the power of dealing with their common property much in the same manner as, for reasons no better founded, the Crown had already begun to administer its own.-General Report, p. 13. i Municipal Reports, pt. i., p. 162. 2 Jeffrey's Roxburghshire, p. 59. certainly not the usual motive with which burghs were erected. This was trade. They had in a general way failed to accommodate themselves to the requirements of the time, and were now suffering the natural result. The Union, to which many of them were opposed, came in time to save them. The sum paid by England under the name of an "Equivalent," helped at once to restore our drooping trade, which trade in its turn again made the burghs once more a power in the state. Our importance as a trading people may be said to date from that time; and as our commerce year after year gradually increased, new towns sprung up, which at once rivalled in greatness, and tended to keep in check the exclusive spirit of the older burghs. The history of these burghs from the Union to the Reform Bill, though not without interest-particularly in electioneering episodes -does not fall within the scope of this paper, and might not be thought suitable for an archæological society. I have sought more particularly to indicate the origin, and trace the early effect of a system of local self-government, existing to our own day, and existing with a power which makes one disposed now and then to wish it rather lessened than increased. It is to this independent local self-control that we must attribute a great part of our national prosperity. While it is a standing example to foreign countries of the results of freedom, it tends to form and control public sentiment at home, in a manner at once acceptable to the people and serviceable to the state. TRANSACTIONS OF THE GLASGOW ARCHEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. NO. XXV. THE HISTORY AND PROGRESS OF THE FOUR LEADING ARTICLES BY ANDREW SCOTT, ESQ., LATE OF H.M. CUSTOMS. Read at a Meeting of the Society held at Glasgow on 14th March, 1864, BY MICHAEL CONNAL, Esq. LITTLE more than two centuries ago none of these articles were in use in the United Kingdom, but since which date their consumption in this country has been progressively on the increase to an amazing degree, and has long rendered them indispensable necessaries of life; being in general use by all classes of the community. They have also led to the most wonderful change that ever took place in the diet of modern civilized nations-a change highly important both in a moral and physical point of view;-the beverage produced from tea and coffee having the admirable advantage of affording stimulus, without producing intoxication or any of its evil consequences. However, the Annual Committee of the Convention of Royal Burghs, in an "Address to the several Burghs in Scotland," of date 3rd September, 1736, represented "that smuggling was carried on to an alarming extent in the country, to the extreme impoverishment thereof, as well as loss to the public revenue; that run tea is sold so cheap that it becomes a regular part of the diet of those who could not think of purchasing it if the duty were added to the price, and that if no tea was imported, people would return to the diet of their ancestors. The chief temptation to the use of it, is the notorious lowness of the price, which is so small that men hardly let it into their heads that it is in any degree a national consideration, nor do they reflect that the price of run tea is the smallest part of the expense when they entertain themselves or their friends with that drug, seeing the sugar drops totally out of the account." |