§ Order for Second Reading read.
§ MR. BAILLIE COCHRANEobjected to its being read a second time at that hour of the night.
§ MR. DUNLOPsaid, last year he brought in a Bill providing that all proprietors, to a certain extent in Scotland, qualified to be Commissioners, should be Commissioners without being named in an Act of Supply. When the Bill went to the House of Lords they passed Amendments providing that the claims should be given in on the 10th of December, that seven days should be allowed for objections, and then that some days' notice should be given, bringing it down to the 27th of December, and then 1685 it was provided that the Commissioners should dispose of them all before the 20th of December, which would be seven days before the claims could be considered. The effect of that would be, that the Commissioners could not possibly dispose of them till the following year. The object of this Bill was for the purpose of enabling the claims to be brought in on the 20th of October.
§ Bill read 2°, and committed for Thursday.