66

66

digent poor, who are to be supported wholly by the contribu tions of the parish kirk, and voluntary alms. It proceeds to specify distinctly what is to be made of the other clafs as follows. And likewise, that such of the saids poor persons as are of age and capacity to work, be first of"fered to the heritors or inhabitants of each paroch, that it they will accept any of them to become their appren"tices or servants, they may receive them upon their obligement to entertain, and set to work the sai e poor persons, and to relieve the paroch of them; for which cause they shall have the benefit of their work untill they "attain the age of thirty years.”"And hat the rest "of the saids poor persons be sent to the correction houses ; for whose entertainment, the saids heritors fhall cause collect contributions, and appoint a quarters al"lowance to be sent along with them, with clothes upon "them to cover their nakednefse. and the said allowance "to be paid quarterly thereafter, by way of advance."

men

Never was there a statute more distinct than this one, or that more exprefsly limited the power of levying an involuntary tax to the support of such poor as were able though not willing to work, at the limited rate tioned of two fhillings Scots per diem for the first year, and one fhilling Scots for three years more in the correction house, and none others; yet with that inattention which is too common in matters of this sort, the power of taxing the parish, conferred on certain persons solely for this pur pose, has been very usually considered as investing them, with a power to tax for the support of the whole poor of the parish at pleasure.

By a subsequent clause in the act, the owners of salt works and collieries are authorised to seize vagabonds and confine them to work the same as in correction houses.

The remaining acts on this subject, with observation s on the whole, will be comprehended in another letter, which will conclude this subject

ON THE DELAYS INCIDENT TO THE COURT

OF SESSION.

Continued from p. 181.

To the Lord President of the Court of Session.

MY LORD,

LETTER XII.

And

I AM happy to think it would be so easy to accom plish the very material objects mentioned in the concluding part of my last letter Not only could a pursuer be thereby compelled to execute, call, and inroll his summons, and to plead his cause, by causing the instance to perish if he did not *. But it might also, by means of the other regulations formerly proposed, be put out of the power of either or both of the parties to delay the cause improperly after it had once come into court. the judge himself could only delay it by allowing the process to lie by him too long unadvised, a thing that does not appear to admit of an easy remedy. I once thought of allowing the procefs to pafs to a new ordinary if not advised within a fortnight of the transmifsion. But that plan I now fear might lead to confusion. Besides it does not occur that there will be much cause to complain of delay on that head, if the forms were once fhortened in other respects, because by fhortening the

* The second diet of a summons, should be allowed to run in va cation time as well as the first diet, that is, it ought not to be required, that the first day of appearance fhou'd fall upon a sefsion day. This would save above a week and sometimes a fortnight of session time, which is valuable.

forms, and by referring a defender to his counter action, or action of repetition, the door would be fhut against the lumber of the cause, and it would no longer be burthen. some to the Lord Ordinary to advise it.

In spite of any little delay in advising, I am persuaded, if these alterations had once taken place, that in the general case, a cause might be finally determined even in the inner house, in the course of two sessions from its commencent, when no proof by witnefses is required. And even when this last is necefsary, another sefsion, or at most two, would bring it to a period. Whereas, I may appeal to your Lordship's experience, if there are many petitions presented to the inner house at present, that do not recite proceedings two, three, four, five. and even six years back.

The present mode of adducing evidence by witnesses, is not only the occasion of great delay. but the proof when so adduced, often gives a very different imprefsion of the fact from what the judges would have received if the witnefses had been examined in their presence: Insomuch that some occasions, the proof brought excites great doubt and difficulty as to facts that would otherwise be plain; and on others, by a strange perversion, goes the length of carrying the cause the opposite way from what it ought to have gone.

on

I cannot do better than to quote to your Lordships the words of Sir William Blackstone upon this head.

"This open examination of witnefses viva voce, in the presence of all mankind, is much more conducive to the clearing up of truth *, than the private and secret examination taken down in writing before an officer, or his clerk, in the ecclesiastical courts, and all others that have

Hales Hist; C. L. 254, 5, 6.

borrowed their practice from the civil law where a witnefs may frequently depose that in private, which he will be ashamed to testify in a public and solemn tribunal. There, an artful or carelefs scribe may make a witness speak what he never meant, by drefsing up his deposition in his own forms and language; but he is here at liberty to correct and explain his meaning, if misunderstood, which he can never do after a written deposition is once taken. Besides, the occasional questions of the judge the jury, and the counsel, proponuded to the witnesses on a sudden, will sift out the truth much better than a formal set of interrogatories previously penned and settled; and the confronting of adverse witnesses is also another oppor tunity of obtaining a clear discovery, which can never be had upon any other method of trial. Nor is the presence of the judge, during the examination, a matter of small importance for, besides the respect and awe with which his presence will naturally inspire the witnefs, he is able by use and experience, to keep the evidence from wandering from the point in ifsue. In fhort by this method of examination, and this only, the persons who are to decide upon the evidence have an opportunity of observing the quality, age, education, understanding, behaviour and inclinations of the witnefs; in which points all persons, must appear alike, when their depositons are reduced to writing, and read to the judge, in the absence of those who made them; and yet as much may be frequently collected from the manner, in which the evidence is delivered, as from the matter of it." I am &'c. Lentulus.

SIR,

OBITUARY OF THE LEARNED.

Right Honourable Robert Lord Romney.

To the Editor of the Bee.

ROBERT LORD ROMNEY, President of the Society instituted at London, for the encouragement of Arts, Manufatures, and Commerce, died at his seat of the Mote near Maidstone in Kent, on Saturday the 16th of November in the 83d. year of his age.

Of all the institutions that dignified and adorned the reign of the good George the second, none in my opinion. is entitled to so much praise as the Society over which Rord Romney worthily presided.

This Society, Sir, was not indebted to any vain or ostentatious patronage of men of fortune and fashion, but to the humble, though zealous and successful endeavours of a very private gentleman, Mr William Shipley of Maidstone in Kent, with the countenance of the good Lord Romney.

It is not enough that Mr Shipley, and Lord Romney, fhould have been put in the fore ground of Mr Barry's picture in the Hall of the Adelphi, or that the gold medal, which the Society presented to Mr Shipley in the year 1758, fhould be engraved and recorded to perpetuate the remembrance of that public spirit, and energy in the private walk of life, which gave being to that useful establishment. It is right and reasonable that every respectable journal should make an entry of the public benefits that have acrued from private virtue, united to public