40
in the most commodious manner. Every industrious person who had property
of any kind could convert it into exchangeable value. In fact, John Law's
project was in a great measure realized by the commodious facilities of the
country banks. It was by those means that the Scottish banks promoted the
industry and augmented the opulence of the Scottish people beyond the belief
of fond philosophers.
§ XIX. Of its Weights and Measures.] With all those topics are connected
considerations, in regard to weights and measures, which Scotland derived
chiefly from England during the twelfth century (o). Whatever may have
been their variety, they long continued to answer all the practical uses of an
uncommercial people. The parliament of Scotland endeavoured, by successive
laws, to obtain that desirable object by appointing several standards. To
Edinburgh was assigned the keeping of the standard ell; to Perth, the reel; to
Lanark, the pound; to Linlithgow, the firlot; and to Stirling, the jug; with
a view perhaps to their respective manufactures. Yet those standards seem
not to have been very carefully kept; and the Stirling jug, like the Tower pound,
was actually lost, till it was discovered by the Reverend Alexander Bryce of
Kirknewton, who was zealous to apply his great mathematical knowledge in
promoting the various purposes of daily life. The benefits of a sameness of
measures and of weights within the same country was acknowledged from the
experience of the past, and a prescience of the future. Yet though the act of
Union declared (p) that there should be such an uniformity in the United King-
dom, their dissimilarity still continues to perplex our theorists more than to
embarrass our dealers; so wedded are people to their practices, as we may
indeed learn from the various laws and numerous treatises, which have been
successively published on this difficult subject (q).
(0) Caledonia, i., bk. iv., ch. vi.                                        (p) 5 Anne, ch. 18.
(q) See a Treatise of weights, mets, and measures of Scotland, by Alexander Hunter, burgess of
Edinburgh, Edin. 1624. This was reprinted at Edinburgh in 1690. John Reid printed in a folio
page, at Edin. in 1706, "The State of the weights and measures of Scotland and England." The late
Lord Swinton, one of the senators of the College of Justice, proposed an uniformity of weights and
measures in Scotland by executing the laws which were then in force. Edin. 1779. This useful
Treatise was printed at Edin. a second time in 1779. In both those editions the assize of David II.
is mistakingly quoted as the assize of David I. Yet an assize of weights and measures of the
year 1425 refers to the elm of David the First. Parl. Record, 63. The learned author of the
Essay on Political Economy published a Tract on the uniformity of weights and measures. The