THE EARL OF PORTLAND RESIGNS.

In the month of January the earl of Portland had set out on his embassy to France, where he was received with very particular marks of distinction. He made a public entry into Paris with such magnificence as is said to have astonished the French nation. He interceded for the protestants in that kingdom, against whom the persecution had been renewed with redoubled violence: he proposed that king James should be removed to Avignon, in which case his master would supply him with an honourable pension; but his remonstrances on both subjects proved ineffectual. Louis, however, in a private conference with him at Marli, is supposed to have communicated his project of the partition-treaty. The earl of Portland, at his return to England, finding himself totally eclipsed in the king’s favour by Keppel, now created earl of Albemarle, resigned his employments in disgust; nor could the king’s solicitations prevail upon him to resume any office in the household, though he promised to serve his majesty in any other shape, and was soon employed to negotiate the treaty of partition. If this nobleman miscarried in the purposes of his last embassy at the court of Versailles, the agents of France were equally unsuccessful in their endeavours to retrieve their commerce with England which the war had interrupted. Their commissary, sent over to London with powers to regulate the trade between the two nations, met with insuperable difficulties. The parliament had burdened the French commodities with heavy duties which were already appropriated to different uses; and the channel of trade was in many respects entirely altered. The English merchants supplied the nation with wines from Italy, Spain, and Portugal; with linen from Holland and Silesia; and manufactures of paper, hats, stuffs, and silks, had been set up and successfully carried on in England by the French refugees.