The practice of the long-forgotten States-General of France was an object of rather anxious inquiry at the reassembling of that body in 1789, after they had been some four centuries and a half in a state of adjournment or dissolution. The investigations thus occasioned brought out many peculiarities which were in practical observance in Scotland down to the Union. All the world has read of that awful crisis arising out of the question whether the Estates should vote collectively or separately. Had the question remained within the bounds of reason and regulation, instead of being virtually at the issue of the sword, much instructive precedent would have been obtained for its settlement by an examination of the proceedings of that Parliament of Scotland which adjusted the Union—an exciting matter also, yet, to the credit of our country, discussed with perfect order, and obedience to rules of practice which, derived from the custom of the old States-General of France, were rendered pliant and adaptable by such a long series of practical adaptations as the country of their nativity was not permitted to witness. There was a very distinct adaptation of another French institution of later origin, when the Court of Session was established in 1533. Before that, the king’s justices administered the law somewhat as in England, but there was an appeal to Parliament; and as that body did its judicial work by committees, these became virtually the supreme courts of the realm. If the reader wants to have assurance that there is something really sound in this information, by receiving it in the current coin of its appropriate technicalities, let him commit to memory that the chief standing committee was named that of the _Domini auditorii ad querelas_. When he uses that term, nobody will question the accuracy of what he says. The Court of Session, established to supersede this kind of tribunal, was exactly a French parliament—a body exercising appellate judicial functions, along with a few others of a legislative character—few in this country, but in France sufficiently extensive to render the assembling of the proper Parliament of the land and the States-General unnecessary for all regal purposes.