s,
the king is so good as to interfere at the request of the creditor, and
to send the debtor his royal command to do him justice within a certain
time--fifteen days, or six, as the case may be. Well, the man resists and
disobeys: what follows? Why, that he be lawfully and rightfully declared
a rebel to our gracious sovereign, whose command he has disobeyed, and
that by three blasts of a horn at the market-place of Edinburgh, the
metropolis of Scotland. And he is then legally imprisoned, not on
account of any civil debt, but because of his ungrateful contempt of the
royal mandate. What say you to that, Hector?--there's something you never
knew before."*

* The doctrine of Monkbarns on the origin of imprisonment for civil debt
in Scotland, may appear somewhat whimsical, but was referred to, and
admitted to be correct, by the Bench of the Supreme Scottish Court, on
5th December 1828, in the case of Thom v. Black. In fact, the Scottish
law is in this particular more jealous of the personal liberty of the
subject than any other code in Europe.

"No, uncle; but, I own, if I wanted money to pay my debts, I would
rather thank the king to send me some, than to declare me a rebel for
not doing what I could not do."

"Your education has not led you to consider these things," replied
his uncle; "you are incapable of estimating the elegance of the legal
fiction, and the manner in which it reconciles that duress, which,
for the protection of commerce, it has been found necessary to extend
towards refractory debtors, with the most scrupulous attention to the
liberty of the subject."

"I don't know, sir," answered the unenlightened Hector; "but if a man
must pay his debt or go to jail, it signifies but little whether he goes
as a debtor or a rebel, I should think. But you say this command of the
king's gives a license of so many days--Now, egad, were I in the scrape,
I would beat a march and leave the king and the creditor to settle it
among themselves before they came to extremities."

"So wad I," said Edie; "I wad gie them leg-bail to a certainty."

"True," replied Monkbarns; "but those whom the law suspects of being
unwilling to abide her formal visit, she proceeds with by means of a
shorter and more unceremonious call, as dealing with persons on whom
patience and favour would be utterly thrown away."

"Ay," said Ochiltree, "that will be what they ca' the fugie-warrants--I
hae some skeel in them. There's Border-warrants too