Maitland Club > Works of Sir Thomas Urquhart

LOGOPANDECTEISION. 40.5
pristine integrity a family of great antiquity, of furthering the course of learning and dolia in«.
good letters, of relieving the innocent from unjust oppressions ; and to do this, will p e " a '
obtain the unanimous consent and approbation of all the souldiers, gentlemen, com-
mons, and people of either sex, within the whole land, the flagitators onely excepted.
67. For which cause, seeing I am drawing to a closure, if any happen to imagine
this my suit to be the more unobtainable, that the preparative thereof may endanger
the disquieting of the state with showers of petitions, to have publike charges allocat-
ed for the payment of private debts ;
68. My answer is, That my case in this particular being quite different from that of
any other within the dominion of Scotland, whether regard be had to me, to my
father's creditors, or the land in debate betwixt us, there is none who by vertue of
any favour by me demanded from the supream power of the land, can for his interest
in the like suit, pretend a right to the same courtesie to be performed on his behalf.
69. For if we consider the land which I claim title to, as the undoubted inheritance
of my predecessors, it is a land which never was bought nor sold, nor otherways de-
rived to my progenitors from any soveraign power then by bare confirmations of their
former rights ; the like whereof cannot with truth be avouched of any land in the isle
of Britain, and therefore the more heedfully to be preserved from being a prey to the
unclean harpyes of usury.
70. If again I be looked upon as one who for any personal courtesie done to my
self, was never obliged to any one of them who call themselves creditors ; how I have
obliged every one of them by having given to each a hundred times more then ever
I had received from them all together ; how withal I am willing to renounce my right
to any thing that ever was acquired by my father ; and how lastly I am content not
onely to pass by the laying of any title to those many several lands of my progenitors
within the shires of Cromartie and Aberdeen, which in his own time he heritably dis-
poned away and abalienated ; but also to discharge them of the vast sums of money
many of them unmercifully pilled out of my rents ever since my father's decease ; I
am certainly perswaded no compatriot of mine by such reasons will pretend to the
like ; or if it happen he should, which I believe he cannot, that offer which I make
to the publike, beyond the reach of common imitation, will quell the ambition of that
suit, the obtaining whereof totally dependeth upon examples he is not able I suppose
to follow.
71. To these I furthermore adjoyn this other circumstance, That in all the isle of
Britain there shall not be found a crew of such rigorous and merciless creditors, Wil-
liam Robertson onely excepted, who without respect to any thing else then their own
meer enrichment, care not what misery their debtor and his posterity be brought into
by their procurement ; which procedure, considering how of eight or nine times I was
surety for country-men of mine, I was always forced to pay the debt ; how likewise,
of a hundred times at least, that money by others of them had been borrowed from