Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 12.pdf/405

 374

erty and cuming furth of the tolbuith of Edinburgh, upon thair awn charges, to cause mak and buy ane hatt or bonnet of yellow coloure to be worn be them all the tyme of thair sitting on the said pillerie, and in all tyme thereafter, svva lang as they remane and abide dyvoris, with speciall provisioun and ordinance, if at ony time or place after the publication of the said dyvoris, at the said mercatt-croce, ony person or personis declarit dyvoris, beis fundin wantand the foresaid hatt or bonnet of yellow coloure; toties it sail be lawful to the baillies of Edinburgh, or ony of his creditors, to tak or apprehend the said dyvour, and put him in the tolbuith of Edin burgh, thairin to remane in sur custodie the space of ane quarter of ane yeir for ilk fault and fellie foresaid." Fifty-four years later a further Act of Sederunt was promulgated which cast upon the unlucky dyvour the in dignity of being required to wear the whole habit, half yellow and half brown—an obli gation which the court was directed by a statute of 1696 to see faithfully observed unless the debtor could allege and prove that his insolvency was due to innocent misfortune.

The court had occasionally, it would appear, granted relief in this matter; for the future no such favor was to be shown except in the case specified. So matters remained for many years; insolvents, of whom there were many, thus having their disgrace publicly advertised by themselves. Towards the end of the eight eenth century, however, public opinion was slowly forming against the harsher measures dealt out to debtors in former times, and one direction in which this was shown was the greater disposition to disregard the act of 1696 and to dispense with ordering the wear ing of the obnoxious dress. The latest case in which we have discovered that the court enforced its use is Dick v. Morison, in 1775 (Morison's Dictionary of Decisions, 11,791), in which, the insolvency being attributable to smuggling, the court declined to grant a dis pensation from the wearing of the habit. Still, however, this relic of a barbarous time re mained part of the law of Scotland, and it was not till 1836, by the statute 6 and 7 Will. 4, c. 56, that it was dismissed into the limbo of things that were. —Law Times.