The Court of Session, at Edinburgh, gave judgment on Thursday
in the case of the Emperor steamer. We formerly mentioned, that a company had started a steamer called the Emperor, to run in the Clyde on Sundays during the summer season : it was allowed to enter all ports except one on the Gareloch, owned by Sir James Colquhoun. There resistance was made by Sir James's men; but the passengers of the Emperor overthrew the bar- ricades that had been erected, and defeated their defenders. Sir James Col- quhoun then applied to the Court of Session for an interdict. The case has been fully heard ; and the Court have decided that Sir James has no right to prohibit the landing of passengers upon the pier which he owns, but which he has placed in the category of public piers'by taking revenue from it. Describing the violent resistance made by Sir James Colquhoun as "un- seemly proceedings," the Lord Justice Clerk expressed surprise that any one entertaining, as no doubt the complainer did, a proper and pious regard for the sanctity and repose of the Sabbath, such as it has been observed in Scot- land, should in the first instance have brought on the certainty of such con- flicts by the measures he adopted. On the part of the respondents and those acting with them, and of the passengers, these collisions and outrages which the complainer described might have been expected as inevitable. Entertaining what their counsel termed "their views of the Sunday ques- tion," they could not be expected to regard the character of the day as any reason for abstaining from forcing a violent passage notwithstanding the preparations made for resisting it. These collisions and breaches of the peace were plainly inevitable, if force were resorted to to prevent these per- sons landing; ana the course adopted was as singular on the part of one de- sirous to preserve the sanctity of the Sunday, as the forcible landing was natural on the part of those who disregarded the Sunday. There is no pub- lic law to shut up piers, harbours, and highways, upon a Sunday ; and Sir James Colquhoun has no right as proprietor to announce that on Sunday these piers shall no longer be used by the public.—Interdict refused.
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