Subject_1 DECISIONS of the LORDS OF COUNCIL AND SESSION, reported by SIR JOHN LAUDER OF FOUNTAINHALL Subject_2 SUMMER SESSION.
Anent the Sumptuary Law Regulating Apparel
Date: 1 June 1673
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This day being the first day of the Session, and the day at which the sumptuary act regulating our apparel took its beginning, and the Lords having little or nothing else ado, and many of them inclining to gratify the merchants of Edinburgh, so far as was possible; they fell to consult and debate if the said act prohibiting all clothes made of silk stuffs to be worn by any except the privileged persons, reached to farandains; which are part silk, part hair. It was fiercely urged by Halton, that they were undoubtedly comprehended under the prohibition; else the law should be so far from attaining its design, that it should be easily mocked and eluded; for as it was notourly known to have been made to bridle our exorbitant prodigality and needless expense we were profusely run to, so it is as notour, farandains being once allowed promiscuously to all ranks, we shall be worse than ever; seeing they are as dear, and of far shorter last than other silks. 2do, Farandains being a heterogeneous body, wherein silk makes both the noblest, preciousest, and the greatest part; the same, jure accessionis, must draw the hair, as the lesser and more ignoble, to its laws, and must give the denomination to the whole. And so the hair, being swallowed up as an accessory, can enter into no consideration here; but the stuff must be reputed silk, ab eo quod est in illo potentius. Vide parag. 26, et seq. Instit. De rerum divisione, ibique Vinnium. Vide 1. 24 et seq. D. De acquir. rerum dominio; 1. 23, p. 2do, et per totum, D. De rei vindicatione; 1. 19, p. 13. D. De auro et argento legato; et 1. 30 D. de usurp. et usucapionibus; 1. 7, p. 2. D. Ad exhibendum.
On the other hand, it was reasoned, That statutes were strictissimi juris, and we were not to disced from their letter, neither were they to be screwed up or extended by a notional equity or pretended parity; that they being composed of disparat materials, they could not be truly termed silk stuffs, nor fall under the compass of a prohibition laid upon silk stuffs; that in the law of accessions the most precious thing was not ever the principal.
This deliberation took no result or conclusion; only I have observed the most part of people to have ventured upon moyhairs, which wants not its own difficulty and danger, till the ambiguity be removed. But to be convinced how raw and ill contrived that act is, in causing a multitude of doubts, see in the animadversions upon that sumptuary law beside me.
