Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception (Vol. ii., p. 407.).—"The Papal decision" referred to may probably be found in the Popes Letters of 2nd Feb. 1849, and of 20th May, 1850. The former professes to seek for information on this question from the priests and bishops of the whole Catholic world, but at the same time it enunciates clearly the Pope's opinion in favour of the doctrine.
J.H.M.
Bath.
In the Catholic Annual Register for the Year ended 30th June, 1850, published by Dolman, will be found the recent Allocution of his Holiness Pius IX., a Pastoral of the Cardinal Wiseman, and one from the bishops of America on this subject; from which your correspondent L. will be fully able to discover the present state of the doctrine of the Catholic Church on this mystery.
FESTE.
Letters of Horning (Vol. ii., p. 393.).—Letters of Horning, in the law of Scotland, are writs issuing under the signet of the sovereign (used in the Supreme Court, or Court of Session, for signifying the sovereign's assent to writs issuing from that court) obtained by creditors, commanding messengers at arms
"To charge the debtor to pay or perform his obligation within a day certain." ... "If payment be not made within the days mentioned in the horning, the messsenger, after proclaiming three oyesses at the marketcross of the head borough of the debtor's domicil, and reading the letters there, blows three blasts with a horn, by which the debtor is understood to be proclaimed rebel to the king for contempt of his authority."
§ 26. "Denunciation, if registered within fifteen days, either in the sheriff's books or in the general register, drew after it the rebel's single cheat, i.e. forfeiture of his moveables to the crown. So severe a penalty, with the character of rebel affixed to denunciation on civil debts, was probably owing to this; that anciently letters of horning were not granted but to enforce the performance of facts within one's own power, and when afterwards [in 1584] they came to be issued on liquid debts, the legislature neglected to soften the penalty. Insomuch that those who were denounced rebels, even for a civil cause, might be put to death with impunity till 1612. Persons denounced rebels have not a persona standi ne judicio. They can neither sue nor defend in any action."
I have preferred, to any explanation of my own, to make the preceding extracts from Erskine's Principles of the law of Scotland, Book ii., Title 5., Sections 24, 25, 26.,—a standard institutional work of the highest authority.
For those who are disinclined to examine the subject too gravely, I must refer to another authority equally worthy of credit, viz. Sir Walter Scott's Antiquary, where, in Chapter xviii.,
"Full of wise saws and modern instances."