wool, lint; carpets, silk beds, stockings,
shoes, boots, gloves, &c. James the Sixth had
interdicted the exportation of "linen cloath,
lint seed, candles, tallow, butter, hides, shoes,
cattle, coals, flesh, horses, wool, skins,
herrings," &c. Charles the Second added to the
list, worsted, woollen yarn, broken copper,
brass, or pewter, under pain of confiscation,
one half to the king, one half to the
apprehender. The British subject was evidently
being taken care of; he felt every day of his
life, as a child does, the paternal coercion for
his good. As for navigation, it was very
properly attended to. "It was forbidden that any
vessel should pass out of the realm without
the king's consent" (James the Sixth). It is
well known what care a father takes to keep
his children from uncontrolled rambling on
the public highways. Nothing can be more
scandalous to any family than a neglect of this
precaution. The wise spirit of our ancestors
perceived this, and James the Fourth enacted,
"that no man, spiritual or temporal, pass
forth the realm without licence, or being
abroad, do any thing against their licence."
They were ordered to be good boys; and were
kept out of the temptation of strange pie-men
and pastrycooks by the further provision of
the statute, which goes on to say—"And that
they have out no money, under pain of
proscription and rebellion, and to be demeaned as
traitors." King James the Sixth enjoined
that "youth going out of the kingdom should
abide in the true religion." Every man of
our ancestors knew what the true religion
was, namely his own, for in the good old times
every man was right, and kings informed the
consciences of those who went astray. King
James the Sixth goes on to order, "that such
as send their sons abroad have a special care
that their stay may be where the true religion
is professed, specially where they want
pedagogues; at least where the Inquisition is not;
and, in case any of these sons haunt the exercise
of contrary religion, those that have the
charge of them may be straiten'd to find
caution, to furnish them no more money
except their reasonable expences to bring them
home." In that way truth was properly
protected.

Money was protected no less carefully. We
all know how, in the present day, coin slips
out of our fingers. Formerly, however,
Britons were commanded by the law to hold
it tight. Under Charles the Second, a strict
Act was passed, "appointing merchants to
swear before the Treasurer not to export
coined money; nor suffer the same to be
exported; nor to conceal the exporting thereof.
And that no merchant or skipper trade or
make voyage to any forraign place before
they take the said oath." And there is only
allowed to passengers sixty pounds (Scots
pounds, twelfths of a pound sterling,) for their
charges; and all licenses are discharged,
except to such as should make faith, or give
bond, that the money is to be bestowed for
timber in Norway, or "for victual in time of
extream dearth; and that they shall return
the superflus."

Perhaps, next to a country's God and its
gold, its game is the most important object
of a wise king's care. Guns having spoilt the
sport of huntsmen (who were limited to men
having a certain amount of landed property),
by an act of Queen Mary's Parliament the
killing of game with fire-arms was prohibited
on pain of death. James the Sixth, tempering
justice with mercy, limited the punishment
to forty days' imprisonment for the
first offence, and the cutting off of the right
hand for a second. This law extended to
pigeons—a protection which those peaceful
animals deserved. The "gents" who disgrace
our own days by pigeon-shooting at the Red
House, Battersea, would all have been brought
to the scaffold in Queen Mary's reign. The
stealing of these birds, also—which could
belong only to the noble or the rich—was made
a capital offence.

The reading of your twenty-first number
has been enough to show me the necessity
that exists in our own day for a judicious
supervision of the press. A free press soon
becomes irreverent, and takes a pride in
setting up the present over the past, and
talking dreamily about the future. Our
ancestors were saved, by the care of their
rulers, from all trouble on this score. Their
reading was selected for them by their
Government, as a child's books are chosen
carefully by a judicious father. Queen Mary
ordained "that no printer presume, attempt,
or take upon hand to print any books, ballads,
songs, blasphemations, rhymes, or tragedies,
either in Latin or English tongue, in any
times to come, until the time the same be
seen, viewed, and examined by some wise and
discreet persons deputed thereto; and there-
after a license had and obtained from Our
Sovereign Lady, for imprinting of such books,
under the pain of confiscation of all the
printer's goods, and banishing him of the
realm for ever." We are afflicted now, I
think, by blasphemations, rhymes, and
tragedies; and we deserve the affliction—you do.
/ disclaim participation in the follies of this
vain age. You suffer the affliction—the
plague of poets, which was spared even to
Pharaoh; and it serves you right for laughing
at your ancestors, and breaking down the
barriers elected by their wisdom.

We Scotchmen were protected in the days
I speak of against English cunning. Under
James the First none of us were allowed to
buy cloth of an Englishman in or out of
Scotland. We were not suffered to send our
good salmon over our border; but Englishmen
might eat it in Scotland, if they paid for
it in ready money, with English coin (James
the Second). Any Englishman entering Scotland
without a safe-conduct might be made
prisoner. Under James the Sixth, it was
also "statute and ordained by our Sovereign