Historical Law-Tracts: The Fourth Edition with Additions and Corrections

by Henry Home, Lord Kames, James A. Harris (Editor)

Overview

Historical Law-Tracts is one of the earliest contributions to the Scottish Enlightenment project of a historical science of society. Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696–1782), was an influential Scottish judge, a prolific man of letters, and one of the leading figures of the Enlightenment in Scotland, and his goal in this work is to show the study of law as a genuinely scientific inquiry and not a mere collection of facts for the lawyer to memorize. He deployed a large range of ancient, medieval, and early-modern sources to trace the development of law and to explain that development in terms of interactions between principles of human nature and political, economic, and social circumstance. He applied this method in substantial and influential treatments of criminal law and the law of property and also to a diverse range of issues, specifically in Scots law. One of Kames’s principal objectives was to expose and discredit the continuing influence of feudal principles in eighteenth-century Scots law and, as such, Historical Law-Tracts can be read as a manifesto for a modern, commercial, Scotland. The work found an international readership as well, especially in America, where it was read as an object lesson in understanding the role of law in a free society.

In Historical Law-Tracts, Kames combined the natural law framework that underlies his Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion with the “conjectural,” or philosophical, approach to history that would receive its fullest treatment in his Sketches of the History of Man to offer a history of law as a history of the progress of mankind from savage to civil society.

The Liberty Fund edition supplements Kames’s original text with a new introduction providing historical context and biographical information, expansion of Kames’s footnotes to explain the often rather obscure system of reference used in the book, translation of the Latin passages, and explanatory annotations relating to important changes that Kames made to the text, including variant readings from earlier editions.

James A. Harris is Professor of the History of Philosophy at the Universityof St. Andrews, Scotland. He is the author of Hume: An Intellectual Biography and Of Liberty and Necessity: The Free Will Debate in Eighteenth-Century British Philosophy. He is the editor of the Liberty Fund edition of Kames’s Sketches of the History of Man.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780865976177
Publisher:	Liberty Fund, Incorporated
Publication date:	07/25/2019
Series:	Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics
Pages:	392
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.63(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

James A. Harris is Professor of the History of Philosophy at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. He is the author of Hume: An Intellectual Biography and Of Liberty and Necessity: The Free Will Debate in Eighteenth-Century British Philosophy. He is the editor of the Liberty Fund edition of Kames's Sketches of the History of Man.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

Editorial Principles xxi

Acknowledgments xxv

Historical Law-Tracts

[Preface] 3

Tract I Criminal Law 8

Tract II Promises and Covenants 48

Tract III Property 61

Tract IV Securities upon land for payment of debt 102

Tract V Privilege of an Heir-apparent in a feudal holding to continue the possession of his ancestor 120

Tract VI Regalities, and the privilege of Repledging 129

Tract VII Courts 140

Tract VIII Brieves 187

Tract IX Process in absence 195

Tract X Execution against moveables and land for payment of debt 206

Tract XI Personal Execution for payment of debt 216

Tract XII Execution for obtaining payment after the death of the debtor 227

Tract XIII Limited and universal Representation of Heirs 250

Tract XIV Old and New Extent 258

Appendix

1 Form of a letter of Slaines 274

2 Copy of a seisin, which proves, that the Jus Retractus was the law of Scotland in the fifteenth century 275

3 Copies of two Rent charges: 277

1 Bond Sir Simon Lockhart of Ley, to William of Lindsay rector of the church of Ayr, for an annualrent of L. 10 Sterling out of the lands of Ley, anno 1323 277

2 Bond by James of Douglas Lord of Balvany 279

4 Old style of letters of Poinding the Ground, founded on the infeftment without a previous decree 280

5 Tax granted by the parliament to Robert I. for his life 281

6 Lord Lile's trial 284

7 Carta Confirmationis Gilberti Menzeis 286

8 Act of Warding 289

9 Letters of Four Forms, 290

The executions written on the back 293

Notes of Letters of Four Forms 295

10 Carta Ricardi Kine 296

11 Charter of Apprising 298

Glossary of Legal Terminology 301

Bibliography 333

Index 339