REV DR JOHN BURNS & Ors v JAMES EWING & WILLIAM DUNN, AND MAGISTRATES AND TOWN-COUNCIL OF GLASGOW (Court of Session)

The defenders pleaded exemption, on the ground that their properties had been disjoined from the Barony parish, and were situated within the burgh as extended, the assessment for the poor of which they had been in the practice of paying.

The cause turned upon the interpretation of the above statute, 39. and 40. Geo. III. c. 88, the defenders maintaining also, that the practice, subsequent to its enactment, was an important element in the legal effect of it.

The Lord Ordinary pronounced the following interlocutor and note, which, along with the views expressed by the Court, embrace the whole disputable matter:

Lord Meadowbank .—I have studied the case as your Lordship has done, and I have no doubt of its substantial justice. I think it quite legitimate, where there is doubt of the true import of the terms used in an Act of Parliament, or any public instrument, to arrive at their just interpretation through the practice under and with reference to such instrument. Accordingly, I consider that the practice in this case, which is established beyond all doubt, makes the true meaning of this private and local statute quite unquestionable.

Lord Meadowbank .—In consequence of what has been stated by Lord Medwyn, I deem it proper to add, that if I had thought, as his Lordship does, that the words of the statute are clear, I should not have felt myself at liberty to look to the practice at all. I have taken the practice into view, exclusively on the ground that, in the terms employed in the statute, there is great ambiguity. For if I held it clear that the statute imported one thing, and the practice another, I had no right to have gone beyond the instrument itself.