We are not aware that any regulation of the Lord Provost and Magistrates of the city of Edinburgh has the force and authority of a statute, or that their voice is potential in opposition to the almanack. If we are right in this, then we beg to tell them that the new arrangement is utterly in the teeth of the law, and may lead to serious consequences. Suppose that any of us has granted a bill which falls due at twelve o'clock. The hour peals from the steeple, and the bill is straightway protested, and our credit damaged. Five minutes afterwards we appear to satisfy the demand, but we are told that it is too late. In vain do we insist upon the fact that the bill is dated at Edinburgh, not at Greenwich, and appeal to the almanack and observatory for the true state of the time. We proffer the sun as our witness, but he is rejected as a suspicious testimony, and as one already tried before the civic court and convicted of fraud, falsehood, and wilful imposition. What is to become of us in such a case? Are we to go into the Gazette, because the Provost has set the clocks forward? Or suppose a man on deathbed wants to make his will. It is Wednesday the ninth of February, close upon midnight, and the sufferer has not a moment to lose. A few hasty lines are written by the lawyer, and as he finishes them the clock strikes twelve. The dying man signs and expires in the effort. The testing clause of that deed would bear that it was signed on Thursday the tenth; but the fact is that the man died upon Wednesday, and we know very well that corpses cannot handle a pen. How is that affair to be adjusted? Are people to be defrauded of their inheritance for a whim of the Town Council, or the convenience of a few dozen commercial travellers? Or take the case of an annuitant. Suppose an old lady, and there are plenty of them in that situation, dies on the term-day exactly five minutes after twelve according to Greenwich time in Edinburgh--who gets the money? Is it a _dies inceptus_ or a _dies non_? If a new term has begun, her representatives are undoubtedly entitled to finger the coin, if not, the payer pockets it. By which arrangement--that of Providence, or that of the Provost--shall such a question be decided? Who is to rule the day, the term, and the season? We pause for a reply. Or let us take another and not imaginary case. A good many years ago we were asked to take shares in a tontine, and complied. Twelve of us named a corresponding number of lives, whereof all have evaporated, save that of which we are the nominee, and one other which had been selected by an eminent vice-president of the Fogie Club. Our man resides in Greenwich, is a pensioner, and we defy you to point out a finer or livelier specimen of the Celtic race, at the advanced but by no means exorbitant age of ninety-five. We are, from the best possible motives, extremely attentive to the old man, whom we supply gratuitously, but cautiously, with snuff and whisky; and his first