19^ observations on the salt laius, j^prii ^, 



or Edinburgh for sale, must come in person, from the dis- 

 tance of forty or fifty miles, to the custom-house, and bring 

 ■with him witnefses to prove, to .the satisfaction of a cus- 

 tom-house officer, eager perhaps to display the insolence 

 of power, it is plain he would be made to incur an expence, . 

 in many cases, beyond the total value of his goods.. The 

 order, therefore, wQuld be in fact a prohibition to send 

 any of these goods to market. Yet it is from the sale of 

 these small articles, alone, that many a poor family must 

 make up their little rents to the landlord. Their stipula- 

 ted rents must be paid •, they would thus be reduced to beg- 

 gary, and must leave a country, v?here every exertion to- 

 procure a scanty subsistence is frustrated by watiton regu- 

 lations, that, under the pretence of augmenting the revenue, 

 are only calculated to destroy. Can any person view such 

 transactions with attention, and not feel a glow of indig- 

 nant abhorencc that no respect to persons can reprefs, and 

 that no consideration whatever ought to induce him. to 

 conceal ? I think it is impofsIble> Had I myself never ex- 

 amined the situation of these poor people, I might have al- 

 low^ed them to continue to groan under their various loads 

 of opprefsion ; bu\ knowing them, as I do, I fliould deem 

 myself blameable in the eyes of God and man, did I not 

 do what is in my power to alleviate these evils. 



Those who live in affluence, or who feel that spirit of 

 independance which persons in easy circumstances alone 

 can feel, will be at the first blufli disposed to say, why do 

 they not resist such illegal opprefsions ? As justly might 

 they alk, why one man, with a pistol at his head, does not 

 refuse to deliver his purse to another i" It,is beyond their 

 power to make any resistance. Should tliey even know 

 that the demand is illegal, which they have no means of 

 knowing, and do not even suspect, they could not bear the 

 expence of even a citation before a couit of justice, far 



