PARLIAMENT PROROGUED.

The same message being communicated to the commons, they voted seventy thousand five hundred and eighty-three pounds for the subsidy to Denmark, and five hundred thousand pounds for augmenting the forces on any emergency. As Great Britain stood engaged by the convention to pay to the crown of Spain the sum of sixty thousand pounds in consideration of the ships taken and destroyed by sir George Byng, which sum was to be applied to the relief of the British merchants who had suffered by the Spanish depredations, the commons inserted in a bill a clause providing for this sum to be paid by the parliament. When the bill was read in the house of lords, a motion was made by lord Bathurst for an address, to know, whether Spain had paid the money stipulated by the convention, as the time limited for the payment of it was now expired. The duke of Newcastle, by his majesty’s permission, acquainted the house that it was not paid, and that Spain had as yet given no reason for the non-payment. Then a day was appointed to consider the state of the nation, when lord Carteret moved for a resolution, that the failure of Spain in this particular was a breach of the convention, a high indignity to his majesty, and an injustice to the nation; but, after a warm debate, this motion was overruled by the majority. The minister, in order to atone in some measure for the unpopular step he had taken in the convention, allowed a salutary law to pass for the encouragement of the woollen manufacture, and two bills in behalf of the sugar colonies; one permitting them, for a limited time, to export their produce directly to foreign parts, under proper restrictions; and the other making more effectual provisions for securing the duties laid upon the importation of foreign sugars, rum, and molasses, into Great Britain, and his majesty’s plantations in America. The supplies being voted, the funds established, and the crown gratified in every particular, the king closed the session with a speech on the fourteenth day of June, when the chancellor in his majesty’s name prorogued the parliament. 262 [See note 2 M, at the end of this Vol.]