Transcribed text:

Dear Sir Edinburgh
23 July 1819

I had the pleasure of
receiving your Letter of the 12 Inst on which I have
delayed answering till I should be enabled to give you
all possible information that could be afforded here
and after a good deal of inquiry I found that that
there had been a question decided by our second
division not a great many months ago which I
think settles the point with the Court below but the
question is appealed by the Incorporation of Hammer
men in Leith who disputed this right of exercising his
craft on the part of William Hunter Blacksmith
You are quite aware that there are two duties to
which the Local Militia were liable
1st Assembling & training annually for a period not
exceeding 28 days each year in their own counties
2 They might be embodied for actual service
The 87 &c regulates the first may order the
Local Militia to be called out yearly & to be named
provided always that the men are not to be named
for more than 28 days in a year nor to be ordered
to march from which the county which they
are enrolled
The 122 &c regulates the 2nd His majesty
may order the Local Militia to be embodied in cases
of invasion and put under command of General
officers & led by their respective officers into any
part of Great Britain – They are subject to
punishment for mutiny and desertion and all
the provisions of Acts of Parliament and of war
while thus embodied
They are afterwards clauses applicable distinctly
to the training and exercising – and to the embodying
and