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merits, arose to such an alarming height, that it was danger-ous to refuse, altogether, to give way to it. The decisions ofour Scots Judges seemed, however, to be marked, in general,with a fully greater spirit of liberality than some English deci-sions upon the same subject. For, though the Magistrates ofEdinburgh , during the scarcity of 1795, prevented wheat, whichhad been purchased for Hull in England, from being shipped attheir port of Leith, upon a complaint from their procurator-fis-cal, ( criminal accuser) ; yet, in 1801, the Supreme Court of Ses-sion reversed a sentence of the Sheriff of Ayr, prohibiting meal,bought in that county for Glasgow , to be carried out of thecounty ; in so far defending the freedom of the internal com-merce of corn ; and probably (had it come before them by ap-peal) they might also have reversed the above-mentioned sen-tence of the Edinburgh Magistrates.
From the decisions of our Supreme Court , it would appe 2 r ,that the crime of forestalling is, by interpretation, restricted tothe intercepting of grain from the market, by purchasing it whenon the road to market. * *
It were much better that all such acts were totally repealed.The Nolumus leges Anglice mutari, is a maxim that cannot be ad-mitted, without many grains of allowance : For, though prece-dent is a good rule to establish certainty of procedure, in caseswhere reason stands neuter, the mere antiquity of precedentyields rather an unfavourable presumption : To follow it, in allcases, indiscriminately, were to place an enlightened age underthe tuition of an age of barbarism ; or to make those that see,adopt the blind for their guides.
Of Corn Laws, for the regulation <rf the Commerce of Grain withForeign Nations.
When every kind of industry is equally left to shift for itself,capital will naturally be attracted to that employment where itcan obtain the highest profit, till such time as the profit of thatemployment shall be beat down, by competition, to the level ofthe profits of other employments. The natural demand wouldbe the natural market, and the natural price would be that whichyielded the general level profit to the employment of capital.
This general level hath been disturbed, and a disproportionatepart of capital has been attracted from agriculture, in the opini-
* Hutcheson's Office of a Justice of the Peace. The words of this author*in regard to the Scots acts against forestalling, are, * Which acts, during the
* late calamitous circumstances of the country, were, for the moment, drawn4 from the happy obscurity in which they had long remained , in consequence of‘ the improved state of agriculture and manufactures, as well as of the jnorp
* liberal and enlightened policy of the present age. *