PREPARED BY JAMES EWING
View of the history, constitution, & funds, of the guildry, and Merchants' House.
Glasgow.
Printed by James Henderson, 26 Bell-Street, 1817.
First edition.
8vo.
112pp. Finely bound in twentieth-century gilt-tooled blue crushed half-morocco, with the original printed upper wrapper bound in at end. A fine copy, but for some spotting to text. Faint remains of an erased inscription starting 'Sent by James Ewing Esq.' to head of title.
An uncommon history of the underpinnings of organised commerce in Glasgow, and a detailed examination of the constitution and finances of Merchants' House, by Scottish merchant, plantation owner, slave-holder, sometime politician and Dean of the Guild of Merchants James Ewing of Strathleven (1775-1853).
Ewing's survey of the Guildry examines the fifteenth-century origins of the distinctions between 'two ranks in the Burgh, possession separate constitutions, and enjoying different immunities', and earlier derivations of the term from 'Gild, which is a Saxon word signifying fraternity'. The Merchants House, he explains, 'acts in three capacities - as an elective body, a charitable association, and a deliberative assembly'. In the first character, it forms a constituent part in the choice of the Dean of the Guild; in the second, it dispenses from its funds, relief to decayed members and their families;- and in the third, it meets to express its opinion on public questions, affecting the political, commercial, and civic interests of the community'. This final capacity ensured that Glasgow merchants held particular sway over the governance of a city - one inextricably linked with trade - through to the nineteenth-century.
Included in appendices at the end are lists of both members and benefactors of the Merchants' House, and a detailed 'Report of the Committee of the Merchants House for Improving the Property' dated 1817.
£ 450.00
Antiquates Ref: 33320
Ewing's survey of the Guildry examines the fifteenth-century origins of the distinctions between 'two ranks in the Burgh, possession separate constitutions, and enjoying different immunities', and earlier derivations of the term from 'Gild, which is a Saxon word signifying fraternity'. The Merchants House, he explains, 'acts in three capacities - as an elective body, a charitable association, and a deliberative assembly'. In the first character, it forms a constituent part in the choice of the Dean of the Guild; in the second, it dispenses from its funds, relief to decayed members and their families;- and in the third, it meets to express its opinion on public questions, affecting the political, commercial, and civic interests of the community'. This final capacity ensured that Glasgow merchants held particular sway over the governance of a city - one inextricably linked with trade - through to the nineteenth-century.
Included in appendices at the end are lists of both members and benefactors of the Merchants' House, and a detailed 'Report of the Committee of the Merchants House for Improving the Property' dated 1817.
