Though with power to elect their own chief magistrate, the burghers commonly took as Provost the head of some friendly local noble family, in which the office was apt to become practically hereditary.

The noble was the leader and protector of the town.

As to police, the burghers, each in his turn, provided men to keep watch and ward from curfew bell to cock-crow.

Each ward in the town had its own elected Bailie.

Each burgh had exclusive rights of trading in its area, and of taking toll on merchants coming within its _Octroi_.
An association of four burghs, Berwick, Roxburgh, Edinburgh, and Stirling, was the root of the existing "Convention of Burghs." JUSTICE.
In early societies, justice is, in many respects, an affair to be settled between the kindreds of the plaintiff, so to speak, and the defendant.