By an act passed in 1672, it was forbidden to import meal from Ireland while the price in Scotland remained below a certain rate. And that this was a serious matter, is proved by an order of Council in April 1695, for _staving_ the grain brought from Carrickfergus in two vessels, named the _James_ and the _Isobel_, and for handing over the vessels themselves to Sir Duncan Campbell of Auchinbreck, who had seized them on their way to a Scottish port. It never occurred to a legislator of those days that there was a kind of absurdity, as well as a glaring selfishness, in arranging for his own country receiving while it should not give. As if to rebuke such policy, the very month after good food prospects had induced the Scottish Estates to permit of exportation, the crop was stricken in one night by an easterly fog, and ‘got little more good of the ground.’[161] The corn was both bad and dear. So early as November, this produced a disorder of the cholera type, accompanied by severe fevers: ‘all our old physicians had never seen the like, and could make no help.’ It was not in all cases the direct result of bad unwholesome victual, for several, who used old corn, or sent to Glasgow for Irish meal, were nevertheless smitten with the prevailing malady, ‘in a more violent and infectious manner than the poorest in the land.’[162] The price of victual having, in the western shires, ascended beyond the importation rate fixed in 1672, the Privy Council (December 13), ‘in consideration of the present scarcity in those parts, and the distress ensuing upon it,’ gave allowance for the importation of meal, ‘but of no other grain,’ from Ireland, to ‘any port between the mouth of Annan and the head of Kintyre,’ between this date and the 1st of February exclusive. [Sidenote: 1695.] A few days later, the Council took measures for fining certain baxters of Glasgow and others who had imported grain before the issue of the above licence. On the 7th of February 1696, the Council extended the period during which Irish meal might be imported to the 15th of April, seeing that the price of the article in the western shires still continued above that set down in the act of 1672. On the 25th of February, the period was farther extended to the 15th of May.