Excerpt from On Scotch Legal Antiquities<br><br>Quite in an opposite direction was the failing Of Sir John Skene, who, being employed to collect the Old laws of Scotland, set his wits to make a respectable code of Scotch law, taking the materials wherever he could find them in lawyers' books, whether they were Scotch or English. Skene says very much of his labour in collecting and digest ing his code, but it never occurred to him that the Old laws Of a country hitherto unpublished are to be found, or at least can best be tested and proved, in the written transactions of the people. I have tracked him and his manner Of working, and I have not Observed that he ever quotes an Old charter, a brieve, or a step of Old court procedure. He was satisfied with transferring to his work whole pages Of the rambling note-books Of nameless lawyers, and to attribute them to the legislation of fabulous kings from Malcolm Mackenneth down wards, while he put on his margins references to English books, wishing his reader to believe that these were borrowed from ours.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.