whereas, in Scotland, none but the immediate vassals of the crown, how extensive soever their landed property might be, obtained a right of suffrage. In England their elective franchise had been brought so low as a yearly rent of forty shillings; and the same rule appears by the regulation of James the first, to have been introduced into Scotland. By the debasement, however, of the money in Scotland, the qualification for voting, according to this nominal rent, would have fallen a great deal lower; but it suited the purposes of James the sixth to explain this regulation, as if it had required the voters to possess, not merely a real rent of forty shillings, but a rent amounting to that sum, according to an old valuation of all the lands in Scotland, which had long been the rule to the vassals of the crown for the payment of their taxes. This valuation, 'from the low state of agriculture when it was made, bearing no proportion to the real value of estates, the right of electing the representatives of counties, instead of being communicated, as in England, to people of small property, was confined to a few

of the gentry, who might easily be secured in the interest of the crown.

2. The number of burgesses who sat in the Scottish parliament had, from the time of their first introduction, been gradually increasing by the incorporation of additional boroughs. The nobility, at the same time, living in the neighbourhood of particular towns, had often found means to gain an influence over the inhabitants, and to obtain the direction of such incorporated bodies. In all the royal boroughs of Scotland, the distribution of justice, and the management of their public affairs, were committed to a set of magistrates, and a town council, who, according to the primitive regulations, appear to have been annually chosen, in each borough, by the collective body of the burgesses *.

By degrees, however, such individuals as had obtained the patronage of particular bo

c. 34.

See Leges Burgorum, c. 77. Statuta Gildæ, c. 33.

This mode of electing the magistrates and town-council was probably continued for a long time in all the boroughs, as may be concluded from a great number of their charters. See state of the evidence contained in the returns to the house of commons, 1791.

roughs, whether the king or any of the great barons, endeavoured to establish a permanent influence, by substituting other modes of election more favourable to their interest. Thus, by a statute in the reign of James the third, it is provided, "that the old council shall annually elect the new; and that the old and new council jointly shall elect the officers of "the boroughs

2

It is probable that this regulation was dictated by the nobility, who had procured an entire ascendant in many of the boroughs, and frequently held the principal offices in those communities. It is, accordingly, further provided in the same statute, "that no captain, nor constable of the king's castles, shall bear any office in the town where he resides †."

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For securing still more effectually the interest which had been already established in a borough, it was afterwards enacted by the legislature, "that four persons only of the old "council should be changed each year;" a regulation plainly intended to relieve the patron from the embarrassment he might be under, in

substituting, all at once, an entire new set of adherents to those who had been displaced.

We meet also with other statutes, apparently calculated to limit the effects of the former, and probably suggested by the crown, ordaining that the officers of boroughs should be real inhabitants, and traders of the community; but the frequent repetition of these acts affords undoubted evidence that little regard had been paid to them.

After James the sixth was invested with the authority of king of England, he found that many of the regulations, introduced by the nobility for the management of the boroughs, were become highly subservient to the maintenance of that influence over them which had then been transferred to the crown; and therefore, instead of abolishing that system of policy, he was disposed to encourage and make improvements upon it. From this time forward, the members of those communities were, by various alterations, more and more stript of the administration and government of their own affairs; while their nominal administrators and governors became, in reality, the agents and tools of the crown. This observation will ex

plain a passage in the claim of rights, presented by the estates of Scotland soon after the revolution of 1688; in which it is said, "That the abdicated family had subverted the rights of the royal boroughs, by imposing upon them the magistrates, the town-council, and the clerks and other officers, contrary to their liberties, and their express charters."

3. Notwithstanding the introduction of the presbyterian church-government into Scotland, the king contrived to continue an appearance of the ecclesiastical order in parliament. The prelates, whom James retained in that assembly, were a sort of bishops possessed of small revenue, destitute of all authority, and loaded with the contempt and censures of the church. But after he became king of England, he found means to increase their powers and emoluments, and to lay the foundation of that episcopal government which was completed by his son and his grandsons, but which was finally abolished at the revolution*.

* Before the reformation, there were in Scotland two archbishoprics, 12 bishoprics, 27 abbacies, and 13 priories. Balfour's Pract. p. 34.