nto his
own sack. This tax, from the odious occupation of the collector, was
regarded by the farmers and factors with particular abhorrence, and
numerous attempts were made at different periods to put a stop to the
grievous exaction, but the progress of public opinion was so little
advanced, and the regard for the ancient trammels of feudal
arbitrariness so deep-seated, that not until 1781 was any serious
resistance made. In that year a person named Johnston stood upon what he
considered his rights, and would allow no acquaintance to be made
between his meal and the iron ladle of the Dumfries hangman. The latter,
seeing in this the subversion of every fundamental principle of social
order, to say nothing of the loss threatened to his means of
subsistence, carried his complaint to the magistrates. Consequently the
Dumfries Hampden was forthwith haled to prison. He was not, however,
long detained there, as his judges were made aware by his threats of
action for false imprisonment that they were unaware of the position in
which they and the impost stood in the eyes of the law. To remedy this
ignorance, and be fore-armed for other cases of resistance, which it was
not unlikely to suppose would follow, the Corporation of Dumfries, in
the year we have mentioned, had recourse to legal advice. That they
obtained was of the highest standing, as they applied to no less a
personage than Andrew Crosbie, the eminent advocate, who has been
immortalised in the Pleydell of "Guy Mannering." It will be interesting
to quote from the document laid before him on this occasion, containing
as it does several particulars about the hangman of the town. One part
describes the office, duties, and pay of the hangman, "who executes not
only the sentences pronounced by the magistrates of the burgh, and of
the King's judges on their circuits, but also the sentences of the
sheriff, and of the justices of the peace at their quarter sessions. The
town has been in use to pay his house rent, and a salary over and above.
Roger Wilson, the present executioner, has, since he was admitted,
received from the town L6 of salary, and L1 13s. 4d. for a house rent.
Over and above this salary and rent, he and his predecessors have been
in use of levying and receiving weekly (to wit each market day, being
Wednesday,) the full of an iron ladle out of each sack of meal, pease,
beans, and potatoes, and the same as to flounders." The history of the
impost is next very bri