Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 15.pdf/484

 Gleanings From Eighteenth Century Law Reports. and bargain with him. They did so, and re ported at a subsequent meeting. A couple of weeks later Anderson dismissed his suits and transferred his stock. He returned to St. Louis with one hundred thousand dollars standing to his credit with the Chase Na

tional Bank; about seventy-five thousand dollars of this sum was clear profit. He could say that he had been fighting a trust until the financial sacrifice had become too great to justify him in continuing the fight.

GLEANINGS FROM THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY LAW REPORTS. BY W. W. WAUGH. THERE is much in the Law Reports of own pocket, and the Court, probably think ing that this zeal against divers weights was the eighteenth century which may help us to reconstruct the past and explain the not entirely for the Lord's sake, decided present. The modern historian, however, in against him. spite of his prodigious industry, does not of In the year 1700 we find the Court of Ses sion dealing with offenders who would now ten glean in the rather dreary field's of Fountainhall, Elchies, and Kilkerran, and it is be dealt with in the Criminal Court. On 24th July of that year they had before them hoped that a few illustrations of Scottish law, one John Corse, who had been accessory to social life, and public affairs, from the pages a fraudulent alteration on a bond. We are of these worthies and the other reporters of toW that "the Lords, considering that their their day may have a certain freshness, and predecessors were always in use to punish interest. . falsehoods themselves where it was not capi The year 1704 produced a quaint appeal tal, therefore they sentenced him to be car by the Merchants of Kilmarnock against ried on Friday, the market-day, betwixt John Blair. This Blair was a bailie-depute of the Bailiary of Cuninghame, and alleging eleven and twelve in the forenoon by the hangman to the Tron, with a paper on his that the merchants' weights were false, he breast bearing the cause, and to have his lug amerciated them in great sums, extending to nailed thereto, and to return to prison dur over 40,000 merks Scots. The merchants ing the Lords' pleasure, which was accordappealed on the grounds, among others, that their standards had been compared by Blair
 * ngly execute."

with those of Irvine, which were no better A curious phase of Scottish urban life is authority than their own, and that they were disclosed in the action by the Dean of Guild of Aberdeen against Messrs. Gordon, Bur protected by the Act of Indemnity, pro nett & Skene, surgeon apothecaries there in mulgated by Queen Anne on her accession. The rapacious Blair replied that thefts were the year 1711. The three had been fined £50 Scots each for acting as merchants, al expressly excepted from, the indemnity, and though not guild brothers in Aberdeen. false weights and measures were thefts in the Their case was hard, for they had been sense of the eighth commandment, and the stented for their trade as merchants, and Scriptures declared divers weights and false bore scot and lot as appeared by the collec balances to be an abomination to the Lord. tor's receipt produced, and they were willing It came out that the fines went into Blair's