to enter as guild brothers, but were refused admittance. The magistrate pled that they were not bound to admit them, being en titled to refuse all except sons of actual mer chants born in Aberdeen who had served an apprenticeship to a merchant. It was replied that the privilege claimed was against public policy, and that the art of pharmacy and sur gery was rather a science than a mechanical trade. Few in the present day would see any sufficient answer to these pleas, but the Court held that the surgeon apothecaries were arti ficers, and could not act as merchants unless they ceased to act as surgeon apothecaries. There were, it appears, ancient Scots statutes forbidding the artificer to be also a mer chant, and the Lords considered that to allow the two offices to be combined would stir such jealousies that "without either witchcraft or spirit of prophecy one might easily foresee what confusion, tumult, yea bloodshed, would inevitably follow thereupon." As might be expected, the aid of the Courts had frequently to be invoked for the protection of trading and manufacturing monopolies in burghs. So late as 1808 we find G. J. Bell and J. Schank More, both fa miliar names in Scots legal literature, oppos ing one another in a case which the Bakers of Perth brought for the defence of their privileges, and it was not till 1846 that f:eedom of trade and manufacture was conceded by statute throughout the Scottish burghs. The Reports often throw light on the state of subjection in which women and servants lived in the eighteenth century, and the scant consideration which they received from the law. In 1715 a man who claimed to have taken a house in Edinburgh sued the owner for possession, and brought forward a female witness to prove the agreement. This witness was objected to on the ground of her sex, female testimony being contrary to a statute of Robert the Bruce. The Court
held that this statute was not in complete de suetude, and rejected the testimony, al though they admitted that custom had sanc tioned female testimony, where the nature of the thing fell most properly under the cognition of women, or where there was no opportunity to have choice of witnesses. In the servant class it is well known that col liers were under special disabilities, being bound to the mine where they worked. Thus in 1748 the Laird of Hillhead pursued the Laird of Kirklee for delivery of four of his colliers. Kirklee pled that the colliers had acquired their freedom through absence for a year from the pursuer's heugh. It was answered that the absence was without con sent, and the Court sustained this plea and ordered Kirklee to return the men and pay their master, perhaps we should say owner, the statutory penalty of £100 Scots for hav ing detained them. By a later decision the servile position of colliers was made yet worse. A laird and coalowner near Ed:nburgh became lessee of the coal in the lands of Edmonston and Woolmet, near his own lands, and drafted some of the colliers to these lands from his own property. The colliers objected, plead ing that they were bound to the property only and;f there was no coal in it they were entitled to go free. However, the court held that they were bound, not to their master's lands and the minerals therein, but to the master himself, and that if he possessed coal upon which he could employ them they were bound to work at it even though he was not owner of the surface. The date of this de cision is 1769, and it is probable that it and some other cases of a similar kind which came up about that time brought about the statute of 1775. This Act abolished the serf dom of colliers who began their occupation after its date and made some provision for freeing the then existing class. This pro vision was, however, seldom taken advantage
