Scottish Court of Session Decisions

Subject_1 PRIVILEGE.

John Drysdale, Supplicant

1752, Feb. 20.
Case No. No. 10.

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The petitioner had pursued a cessio bonorum, and upon the proof it appeared by his own shewing, that his breaking was owing chiefly to his smuggling, and sundry seizures made of his goods. He produced sundry certificates of his honesty, and prayed to dispense with the dyvours habit, which we are but too apt to do, even contrary to our own act of sederunt 1688, and to the act of Parliament 1696. But as several of us thought the breaking by smuggling could no more be called breaking by misfortune, as the act 1696 expresses it, or by innocent misfortunes, as our act 1688 expresses it, no more than if it were by gaming, and as this smuggling trade is ruinous to the country, we opposed dispensing with the habit; and upon the question it carried by a great majority not to dispense with it. As I think, Lord Dun and Drummore, (who was in the chair) continued against the interlocutor; for some who spoke for dispensing with the habit, in the end voted for the interlocutor.