1815 - 1817 Scroll Book - Nine Incorporated Trades of Dundee

That the said Parliamentary Commissioners have never been convened, but your Honours and
your predecessors in office have, in the face of the said Act of Parliament, openly dared to levy
the said duty and to apply the said Revenue in the most arbitrary manner, without any legal
sanction whatever, and to the utter annihilation of that salutary control which the said Act of
Parliament points at. That in the circumstances the collection of said duty is highly
reprehensible however it may have been applied and the persons collecting it have exposed
themselves to a personal liability in so doing. That it is proper and essential to the welfare of
the Community that the same lawless course of proceeding be no longer continued, but be put
a stop to without delay. And I therefore now require you the said Provost, Magistrates and
Toun Council not only to forthwith cease from the collection of the said duties until you shall
have convened and received the sanction of the said Parliamentary Commissioners, but
likewise to take such steps as may be requested for calling your Honours predecessors to
account for their illegal improper conduct. And I protest that if notwithstanding the
requisition, you shall refuse to do as hereby required and shall proceed in the levying and
collection without calling together and receiving the sanction of the said Parliamentary
Commissioners you shall and each of you be personally both not only in repetition of whatever
sum shall be so levied but likewise in all skaith and damages which may accrue to the
Community thought your lawless and open contempt of the foresaid Act of parliament. And
farther I protest that if you fail to institute the foresaid necessary proceedings against your
said predecessors as also before required, you shall farther all and each of you be personally
liable in the consequences of this farther neglect of your manifest duty. Thereupon and upon
all and sundry the premises I take instruments in the hands of William Small Esquire Toun
Clerk in presence of the hail Magistrates, Toun Council and Deacons of Trades in a full
Convention of Council assembled this sixth day of October One thousand eight hundred and
seventeen years I demand registration hereof and crave Extracts (signed) Robert Mudie
Deacon.”
The following is a copy of the Protest taken by Convener Gellatly referred to in the foregoing
Minute.
“I James Gellatly Deacon Convener of the Nine Incorporated Trades of Dundee Do in their
name and as instructed to at a meeting this day in the Common Hall assembled protest that
nothing shall be done at this meeting nor at any meeting of the Toun Council during the
administration of the present Magistracy which may in anyways infringe upon or prejudice
the rights and privileges of the said Nine Trades. And I protest farther that the Convener and
Deacons of the said Nine Trades are by law entitled annually to see and audit the Touns
Accounts; that they have been formerly acknowledged as such by repeated acts of Council and
were even in practice never extruded from the exercise of so important a duty until the affairs
of the Burgh fell under the present arbitrary system of misrule by the overwhelming and
exclusive undue influence that has so notoriously been acquired by one man Provost
Alexander Riddoch, that from the present acknowledged state of the Burgh funds, labouring
as they confusedly do under an annual deficit of more than two hundred pounds Sterling, in
providing for the discharge of which, the said Nine Trades are bound and obliged along with
the said Magistrates and Toun Council it is become indispensably necessary that the said
Convener and Deacons be restored to the full exercise of their rights in the character of
Auditors, for without that it is impossible they can have any control over and expenditure
which cuts deeply not only on the public welfare, but also on the separate and individual
interests of the said Nine Trades: that the fate of the Burgh System of administration of
Aberdeen as acknowledged and accounted for by an official document of the Magistrates of
that place themselves clearly and unequivocally points out the extreme danger of trusting to a
self elected Magistracy and the Nine Trades feel that danger to be the more urgent in this
Burgh because the Burgh accounts are not regularly audited and sanctioned by the
Magistrates and Toun Council themselves; nay it is a notorious fact that when presented to be
passed they are not even allowed to be read over to the Members of Council; that in this way it
has so happened that the Burgh funds have fallen under the private and exclusive
management of a single individual, the said Provost Alexander Riddoch whose intromissions
have received no check nor even been enquired into for a series of years – that excepting the
sd Provost Alexander Riddoch there is not another person in Council who can pretend to the
smallest knowledge of the state of the Burgh affairs, and the very Treasurer of the Toun kept
in a state of such complete and utter ignorance that his office in fact has become nothing but a
name. That upon one late occasion, it is notorious that when a gentleman who dared to think
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