Previous to the period we are now entering, a person addicted to intemperate language might have been called to account by his church, or at the bar of his own conscience. He could not have been called to account by the State. The suggestion of State interference, so far as concerns the southern division of this island, seems not to have previously occurred, and we are consequently justified in inferring that the necessity for it had never seriously arisen. There is, indeed, complete cohesion and consistency in what was happening. We believe we have shown elsewhere whence it was, and when it was, that the English people first began to swear, and we are confirmed in our conclusions by finding that this was the precise period at which English law-makers began to legislate upon swearing. Passing over barbarous and obsolete laws of a more imperfect civilisation, we find that the first essays in State control commenced in Scotland. A full half century before the question came before Elizabeth's parliament, the sister kingdom had the benefit of a statute inflicting a monetary penalty upon the use of oaths. This enactment, passed by the Scottish parliament of 1551, calls for notice upon other grounds besides those of morality. If a legal document can be said to partake of a poetic character, it was certainly the case with this ordinance of Queen Mary, which seems to have been directly inspired by the metrical labours of William Dunbar, then lately the national poet. The verses of Dunbar to which this result can be partially attributed are those known as 'The Sweirers and the Devill.' It is certainly remarkable that the framers of the Act would seem to have prepared its clauses with Dunbar's poetry open before them. At all events, the statute literally recites the "ugsome oaths" that are used by the old versifier. There is a severity in the statute at which Dunbar himself would have been surprised had he lived down to Mary's reign. In particular, it enacts that "a prelate of kirk, earl or lord," shall for the first offence be fined to the extent of twelve pennies, but for the fourth the delinquent shall be banished or imprisoned for a year.