It is to be feared that Kilravock was little benefited by their censure, as he left the paper docketed in his repositories as ‘a comical synodical rebuke.’[[408]]
Aug. 18.
That remarkable property of human nature—the anxiety everybody is under that all other people should be virtuous—had worked itself out in sundry famous acts of parliament, general assembly, and town-council, throughout our history subsequent to the Reformation. There was an act of Queen Mary against adultery, and several of Charles II. against profaneness, drunkenness, and other impurities of life. There was not one of William and Mary for the enforcement of the fifth commandment; but the general principle operated in their reign very conspicuously nevertheless, particularly in regard to profaneness and profanation of the Lord’s Day. King William had also taken care in 1698 to issue a proclamation containing an abbreviate of all the acts against immorality, and in which that of Charles II. against cursing and beating of parents was certainly not overlooked, as neither were those against adultery. So far had the anxiety for respectable conduct in others gone in the present reign, that sheriffs and magistrates were now enjoined by proclamation to hold courts, once a month at least, for taking notice of vice and immorality, fining the guilty, and rewarding informers; moreover, all naval and military officers were ordered to exemplify the virtues for the sake of those under them, and, above all, see that the latter duly submitted themselves to kirk discipline.
An act of the town-council of Edinburgh ‘anent prophaneness,’ in August 1693, threatened a rigorous execution of all the public statutes regarding immoral conduct, such as swearing, sitting late in taverns, and desecration of the Lord’s Day. It strictly prohibited all persons within the city and suburbs ‘to brew, or to work any other handiwork, on the Lord’s Day, or to be found on the streets, standing or walking idly, or to go in company or vague to the Castlehill [the only open space then within the city |1708.| walls], public yards, or fields.’ It discharged all going to taverns on that day, unseasonably or unnecessarily, and forbade ‘all persons to bring in water from the wells to houses in greater quantities than single pints.’ By another act in 1699, tavern-keepers were forbidden to have women for servants who had not heretofore been of perfectly correct conduct. All these denunciations were renewed in an act of February 1701, in which, moreover, there was a severe threat against barbers who should shave or trim any one on Sunday, and against all who should be found on that day carrying periwigs, clothes, or other apparel through the streets.
Not long after this, the Edinburgh council took into their consideration three great recent calamities—namely, the fire in the Kirk-heugh in February 1700; another fire ‘which happened on the north side of the Land market, about mid-day upon the 28th of October 1701, wherein several men, and women, and children were consumed in the flames, and lost by the fall of ruinous walls;’ and finally, ‘that most tremendous and terrible blowing up of gunpowder in Leith, upon the 3d of July last;’ and, reflecting on these things as tokens of God’s wrath, came to the resolution, ‘to be more watchful over our hearts and ways than formerly, and each of us in our several capacities to reprove vice with zeal and prudence, and promote the execution of the laws for punishing the vicious.’
All originality is taken from a notorious parliamentary enactment of our time by a council act of April 1704, wherein, after reference to the great decay of virtue and piety, and an acknowledgment that ‘all manner of scandals and immoralities do daily abound,’ it is ordered that taverners, under strong penalties, shall shut at ten o’clock at night, all persons harbouring there at a later hour to be likewise punished.
Inordinate playing at cards and dice in taverns is instanced in a council act of about the same period, as one of the most flagrant vices of the time.
It is to be understood that the discipline of the church over the morals of congregations was at the same time in full vigour, although not now fortified by a power of excommunication, inferring loss of civil rights, as had been the case before the Revolution. Much was done in this department by fines, proportioned to the quality of offenders, and for the application of these to charitable uses there was a lay-officer, styled the Kirk-treasurer, who naturally became a very formidable person. The |1708.| poems of Ramsay and others during the earlier half of the eighteenth century are full of waggish allusions to the terrible powers of even the ‘man’ or servant of the Kirk-treasurer; and in a parody of the younger Ramsay on the Integer Vitæ of Horace, this personage is set forth as the analogue of the Sabine wolf:
‘For but last Monday, walking at noon-day,
Conning a ditty, to divert my Betty,