Notwithstanding all impediments from bad and simply officious legislation, we can see that the first third of the seventeenth century was a time of mercantile prosperity and progress in Scotland generally, and in Edinburgh in particular. The country was at peace; the laws were tolerably well executed; and as yet the religious troubles of the century had not begun. There was a general disposition, encouraged by the king, to see the useful arts cultivated in our country; and several were actually now established for the first time. For example, it was now that leather was first made of good quality in Scotland, the improved art being introduced by workmen from England. The manufacture of glass was set up in 1610 at Wemyss in Fife, by the ancestor of the Earls of Kinnoul, and met with tolerable success. Paper and a superior kind of cloth were attempted, but unsuccessfully. A great grudge being entertained regarding the large sums annually sent to Flanders for soap, there was much interest excited by an effort made at Leith, in 1619, to manufacture that useful article. The enterpriser was Mr Nathaniel Udwart, son of the Nicol Udwart who had entertained King James in his house in Niddry’s Wynd. As an encouragement, he asked a privilege excluding the foreign article for a number of years, and the Privy Council took much pains to ascertain if this could be done without prejudice to the public. Pages after pages of their records are filled with deliberations on the subject, marginally marked with the words, ‘Anent the Sape,’ or ‘Mr Nathaniel his sape;’ and finally, he obtained the desired privilege under certain conditions. In this matter, however, flesh and blood could not endure the false political economy. Mr Nathaniel’s soap was pronounced to be of unsatisfactory quality; and it was shewn to be better for the people in such distant provinces as Dumfries, to import their soap from Flanders, than to transport it from Leith by land-carriage. The native soap-factory appears, therefore, to have had a considerable struggle at first. Afterwards, it was more successfully carried on, along with the making of potasses, by Patrick Maule, the ancestor of the Lords Panmure; for here is another of our wealthy noble families who were beholden to trade for some part of their fortunes. We really must not be too hard upon our ancestors for the false commercial maxims by which they made their own interests so much of a difficulty to themselves, for we ought to remember how recently we have shaken off some of these very maxims, and how greatly foreign nations yet suffer from them. I daresay you will all hear, with something like a smile, that the proceedings of King James in 1598, regarding the poultrymen of Edinburgh, who tried to evade an edict for maximum prices, by selling their poultry in secret to people who would give better prices, were precisely imitated by the present Emperor of France in 1856, with respect to the butchers of Paris.