ADAM SMITH. 281 



Acts of James 1st, and compared them with your Lordship's 

 remarks. From these last I have received both much plea- 

 sure 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 ob- 

 served upon the Acts of James 1st. They are penned 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 dis- 

 order 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 conse- 

 quently very rare. Few people, therefore, could propose to 

 live by entertaining travellers; and consequently there 

 would be few or no inns. Travellers would be obliged to 

 have recourse to the hospitality of private families in the 

 same manner as in all other barbarous countries ; and being 

 in this situation real objects of compassion, private families 

 would think themselves obliged to receive them, even though 

 this hospitality was extremely oppressive. Strangers, says 

 Homer, are sacred persons, and under the protection of 

 Jupiter ; but no wise man would ever choose to send for a 

 stranger unless he was either a bard or a soothsayer. The 

 danger, too, of travelling either alone or with few attendants 

 made all men of any consequence carry along with them a 

 numerous suite of retainers, which rendered this hospitality 

 still more oppressive. Hence the orders to build hostellaries 

 in 24 and 85. And as many people had chosen to follow 

 the old fashion and to live rather at the expense of other 



