preserved. The first is as follows:--

_KIRKALDY, 5th March 1769_.

MY LORD--I should now be extremely obliged to your Lordship
if you would send me the papers you mentioned upon the
prices of provisions in former times. In order that the
conveyance may be perfectly secure, if your Lordship will
give me leave I shall send my own servant sometime this week
to receive them at your Lordship's house at Edinburgh. I
have not been able to get the papers in the cause of Lord
Galloway and Lord Morton. If your Lordship is possessed of
them it would likewise be a great obligation if you would
send me them. I shall return both as soon as possible. If
your Lordship will give me leave I shall transcribe the
manuscript papers; this, however, entirely depends upon your
Lordship.

Since the last time I had the honour of writing to your
Lordship I have read over with more care than before the
Acts of James I., and compared them with your Lordship's
remarks. From this last I have received both much pleasure
and much instruction. Your Lordship's remarks will, I
plainly see, be of much more use to me than, I am afraid,
mine will be to you. I have read law entirely with a view to
form some general notion of the great outlines of the plan
according to which justice has been administered in
different ages and nations; and I have entered very little
into the detail of particulars of which I see your Lordship
is very much master. Your Lordship's particular facts will
be of great use to correct my general views; but the latter,
I fear, will always be too vague and superficial to be of
much use to your Lordship.

I have nothing to add to what your Lordship has observed
upon the Acts of James I. They are framed in general in a
much ruder and more inaccurate manner than either the
English statutes or French ordinances of the same period;
and Scotland seems to have been, even during this vigorous
reign, as our historians represent it, in greater disorder
than either France or England had been from the time of the
Danish and Norwegian incursions. The 5, 24, 56, and 85
statutes seem all to attempt a remedy to one and the same
abuse. Travelling, from the disorders of the country, must
have been extremely dangerous, and consequently very rare.