Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 15.pdf/486

 Gleanings From Eighteenth Century Law Reports. of, and it was not till 1799 that "a statute of tardy humanity gave unconditional freedom to all." In the year 1770 more liberal views pre vailed when the question was discussed whether a negro slave in the service of Sir William Maxwell could be received as a wit ness. It appeared that slaves were men tioned as incompetent to testify in a statute of Robert the Bruce, and that the slave in question was not a- Christian and could, therefore, not appropriately take the oath. To this it was replied that the slave having come to Scotland had thereby become free and that he could take an oath by his own gods. The Court adopted this contention and received him) as a witness. It was pleaded in this case, but not decided, that a slave became free on landing in Scotland. This question was, however, discussed and decided in 1778, when it was held that a negro slave who had been brought from Ja maica could not be compelled by his master either to continue his services in Scotland or to go back to Jamaica to continue them there. One hears people speak at times as if "freezing out" a business competitor was a modern invention and like many other mod ern inventions perfected in America and im ported from there. But in 1729 we find that the Bank of Scotland had been obliged to make a temporary stoppage of payment, and the Royal Bank, then the only other char tered bank in Scotland, acquired a number of its notes and applied for letters of horning against it, hoping to bring about its extinc tion. The Court of Session, disliking the application of the Royal Bank as being in amulationem refused the diligence. The Royal Bank was successful in an appeal to the House of Lords, but before the decision was given matters had become smoother for the Bank of Scotland, and it has been spared to flourish to the present time. . ..

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We are reminded by more than one case in the Reports of the disabilities which the Jaw in the eighteenth century imposed on Roman Catholics. In 1745 an heir of entail to the estate of Carron brought an action against the heir who had become entitled to possession to have it found that the latter being a professed Papist and a Fellow in the College of Jesuits at St. Omers was incapa ble to succeed, and that his right had passed to the pursuer as nearest Protestant heir. The Jesuit appears to have lost the estate, for he did not take the course offered to him by the law for getting free of the disability. He would have had to purge himself of Popery by taking a formula before the Privy Council or the Presbytery of the bounds. Mention has been made of a case early in the century where the privileges of the Guild Brethren in Aberdeen were upheld; the brethren of Glasgow in 1765 seem to have been equally jealous of their privileges, but they were less successful in asserting them. James Crosse, a freeman wright, had been employed by Daniel Miller, an unfreeman wright, to make two coffins for him. Upon a complaint the magistrates con demned Crosse to a fine of loo merks for packing and peeling with unfreemen. The Lords suspended the conviction, holding that Crosse's action had not aided any invasion of the privileges of the Corporation of Wrights. In furnishing a coffin they held that a wright could only make the wooden part, the cutting of the cloth belonged to the tailor craft, and the preparing of the nails, screws, and handles belonged to the craft of hammermen. A work, they thought, which required the intervention of so many differ ent crafts could not be peculiar to any one corporation. As one would expect, the civil commotion3 of 1715 and 1745 gave rise to quite a crop of cases in the Reports. We learn from a case decided so late as 1767 how funds were