such powers of "declaring" a crime. There are also such familiar technical differences as those relating to Conveyancing and the Law of Purchase, and such divergencies from English custom as the number of a Scottish jury, and its power to bring in a verdict which is not unanimous, or the judgment of "Not Proven," which is unknown to English law. But beyond all such debatable issues, there are many important respects in which the law of Scotland is more considerate of the rights of the weak than is the law of England. In questions relating to movable succession, for example, widows and children are protected from the eccentricities of death-bed piety; in cases of legitimacy and marriage the weak can claim privileges refused to them by English law; and with regard to divorce, the rights of husband and wife are equal. The principles of Scots law which protect the lease-holder and the tenant against the caprice of the landlord can be traced to an Act of the Scottish Parliament as far back as 1449. If the general tendency of the Romanization of Scots law has been to render it less harsh, it forms an interesting contrast to the Romanization of German law, which met with strenuous opposition, and which increased the severity of German municipal legislation. If the production of a legal system forms but a small _apologia_ for a Parliament which existed for several centuries, it nevertheless entitles the Scottish Estates to be reckoned among the forces which have made the nation; and it is legitimate cause of satisfaction that, in spite of all the forces of misgovernment which held sway for so long, the peculiarity of the law of Scotland is its regard for the poor and the weak. If Scottish parliamentary institutions never produced the complacent Whiggism of the triumphant middle class of England, it certainly produced many worse things, and it is pleasant to find some few that are better. THE SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT BEFORE THE UNION OF THE CROWNS "In Sterling, the king being convoyit to the parliament hous, and set at the burde, be fortune he espyit a hole in the burde-cloth; so that, as young childer are alwayis unconstant and restles, he preissit to attene to the hole with his finger, and askit of a lord wha sat nar by him to know what hous that was; and he answerit that it was the parliament hous. 'Then', said the king, 'this parliament hes a hole into it.' Whether God inspyrit the babe then with prophecie at that tyme or not, I will not dispute."[10]