[Drop-head title:] Observations and Proposed Improvements on the Scots Bankrupt Law.

4to, pp. 24. Extracted from a volume. A little spotting, first four leaves folded at fore-margin to avoid trimming annotations. Contemporary annotations to several leaves. A rare compilation from assemblies of the Royal Boroughs of suggested improvements to the Bills of Exchange (Scotland) Act of 1772, which marked the birth of the process of sequestration which remains the core of Scottish bankruptcy law. The act, which mitigated the effects of the British Credit Crisis of 1772-3, was criticised for being too inclusive and therefore ineffective and the author of this pamphlet rebuts those claims. Dating the pamphlet is challenging: ESTC contains two records, one dated [1775?] and the other [between 1772 and 1773?], seemingly referring to the same publication - but the former lists holdings in the NLS only whereas their own cataloguing has been changed to [1772?]. The text references the act of 1772 repeatedly, but also refers to ?the American war?, and the expected expiry of the act - suggesting that it actually post-dates 1776 and predates the act?s renewal in 1779, since it had initially lasted 7 years then was renewed until the Payment of Creditors (Scotland) Act 1783 replaced it. All together we have traced four recorded copies: two in the NLS, one in the BL, and one in Glasgow (where the catalogue gives the date as [17--]). The annotations in this copy - possibly by the unknown author - update the language referring to ?one or more newspapers? for creditors to be obliged to advertise in, replacing that text with specific Scottish papers (the Caledonian Mercury and Edinburgh Evening Courant). ESTC T176979; T510168. …