disposed towards that claim, which some of his countrymen have put in, for the originality of the Regiam Majestatem. “The Regiam Majestatem ascribed to David the first seems,” he observes, “to be an imitation and a servile one, of Glanville. Several Scottish Antiquaries, under the influence of that pious credulity, which disposes men to assent without hesitation to whatever they deem for the honor of their native country, contend zealously, that the Regiam Majestatem is a production prior to the Treatise of Glanville; and have brought themselves to believe, that a nation, in a superior state of improvement, borrowed its Laws from one considerably less advanced in its political progress. The internal Evidence (were it my province to examine it) by which this theory might be refuted is in my opinion decisive. The external circumstances, which have seduced Scottish Authors into this mistake, have been explained with so much precision and candor by Sir David Dalrymple, in his Examination of some of the arguments for the high antiquity of the Regiam Majestatem, Eding, 1767. 4to, that it is to be hoped, the controversy will not be again revived.”[26] [Footnote 25: Reeves’s Hist. Eng. Law 225.] [Footnote 26: Hist. Charles 5. Vol. 1. p. 296.] In dismissing this subject, it may be remarked in the words of Mr. Reeves, that it seems unnecessary to contend for the originality of the Regiam Majestatem, whilst a doubt of much more importance remains unsettled—whether that Treatise, as well as the others in the publication of Skene, are now, or ever were, any part of the Law of Scotland, on which, as we have already observed, so many eminent men differ. On the other hand, the authenticity of Glanville, as the code of Law existing in this country during the Reign of Henry the Second, has been admitted, either expressly or impliedly by all the English Lawyers, who have florished in the long interval which has elapsed from that period to the present, and never has been questioned, if we except a solitary _dictum_, which, as it equally affected the credit of Bracton, and was totally unauthorised, is refuted by a thousand circumstances, if it were an object to mention them.[27] But to return from this digression. [Footnote 27: Plowd. 357.]