ADAM SMITH. 217 



send me them. I shall return both as soon as possible. If 

 your Lordship will give me leave I shall transcribe the 

 MSS. papers : this, however, entirely depends upon your 

 Lordship. 



" Since the last time I had the honour of writing to your 

 Lordship, I have read over with more care than before the 

 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 consequently very 

 rare. Few people, therefore, could propose to live by enter- 

 taining 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 them- 

 selves 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 



