Scottish Court of Session Decisions

Subject_1 DECISIONS of the LORDS OF COUNCIL AND SESSION, reported by SIR DAVID DALRYMPLE, LORD HAILES.
Subject_2 BURGH-ROYAL.
Subject_3 Powers of the Town-Council to inflict fines on Burgesses refusing to accept of offices within the Burgh.

James Hill
v.
Thomas Hopkirk and John M'Call

Date: 26 February 1779

Click here to view a pdf copy of this documet : PDF Copy

[Faculty Collection, VIII. 187; Dictionary, 10,995.]

Braxfield. Magistrates have a discretionary power to oblige burgesses to serve: but here the Magistrates, after the regulation 1748, could not impose a new fine.

Covington. I am not fond of allowing burgesses to buy off, although the practice is such in many boroughs, and even in London.

Hailes. Perhaps it would have been more constitutional to have deprived the defenders of their burgess tickets.

President. The Magistrates have no such power. It would have been hard to have deprived seceders of their burgess-tickets; who, being good subjects, do nevertheless entertain scruples of conscience as to taking certain oaths.

[This does not apply to the defenders, who are not seceders, and have no scruple 6f conscience to plead; neither does it apply to any seceders, but the anti-burghers: and it remains to prove that such men can be members of borough community, according to their principles, when contrasted with the regulations of boroughs and the law of the land. Query, Are those men positively Whigs, or are they not rather negatively not Jacobites?]

On the 12th January 1780, “The Lords assoilyied, in respect that the defenders had already been fined for councillors, and that the office of Dean of Guild implies that of councillor;” adhering, in substance, to Lord Gardenston's interlocutor.

Act. Ilay Campbell. Alt. J. Maitland.