Transcribed text:

Glasgow 17 July 1819
Dear Sir
On receipt of your esteemed
letter of the 12 Inst. I applied to Mr Ewing our late Dean
of Guild as most likely to give me the information you
required he readily consented to enquire into the matter
and yesterday he sent me the following note addressed
to Mr Reid of the Town Clerks office with the answer
attached to it
“A question has been put to me which
from your attention to the business when I was Dean
of Guild you will at once be able to answer without
troubling my friend Mr Readie “On what conditions
are persons who belonged to the Local Militia entitled
to carry on trade without entering as Burgesses”
Is regular training or exercise of the Regiment
sufficient or is it not requisite that it must of been
called out, or embodied for actual; “Must the soldiers
not have been a certain time in the service to entitle
them to this privilege”
To these queries Mr Reid replies
as under “By the act 52 Geo III C 68 S 179
it is enacted that Married Local Militiamen may set
up in any place in Great Britain as Soldiers do
under the acts passed at end of wars The enacting words
are “That every person having served in the Local
Militia when drawn out into actual service being
a married man, may set up and exercise any trade
&c. The Court ~Court~ of Session ~for~ the case Kirkwood
agt Tailors of Cannongate 19 Jany 1811 held militia
to be on actual service when embodied and training
tho not exposed to be maimed or wounded and tho
never