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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> Scottish Court of Session Decisions >> Fleming and Others, Magistrates of Rutherglen, v Urie, &C. [1776] 5 Brn 404 (9 August 1776)
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Subject_1 DECISIONS of the LORDS OF COUNCIL AND SESSION. reported by ALEXANDER TAIT, CLERK OF SESSION, one of the reporters for the faculty.
Subject_2 BURGH-ROYAL.
Date: Fleming and Others, Magistrates of Rutherglen,
v.
Urie, &C
9 August 1776 Click here to view a pdf copy of this documet : PDF Copy
By the 22d Act of the Convention of Estates, anno 1689, Town's pensioners were excluded from the voting at elections. This Act, though made with an immediate view only of regulating the poll election then ensuing, has been thought so just and equitable as to have been copied as a rule in all elections since that period. But, though Town servants, or Town pensioners may, with some degree of propriety, be considered as unfit persons to be trusted with a vote on such occasions, because they hold their employment, or pensions, at the will of the Town-Council; yet when this disqualification was extended, by an Act of the Town Council of Rutherglen, to all the town debtors, by bond, tack duty, or any other way, the Lords thought the extension contrary to the common law and rights of burgesses; and therefore, when it was rescinded by a contrary Act of Council, the Lords sustained that Act when brought under reduction, and assoilyied the defenders, and gave expenses.
The electronic version of the text was provided by the Scottish Council of Law Reporting