PROCEEDINGS UPON A PAMPHLET, ENTITLED “THE CASE OF MR. MURRAY.”

Nor was this the only address presented to the king: upon such an important subject. A pamphlet, entitled “The Case of the Hon. Alexander Murray, esquire, in an Appeal to the People of Great Britain,” was first stigmatized in a complaint to the house, and was afterwards produced and read at the table. The piece was written with great acrimony, and abounded with severe animadversions, not only upon the conduct of the returning officer, but also on the proceedings of the commons. The violent members immediately took fire, and the flame extended itself to the majority. Nay, the house unanimously resolved, that the pamphlet was an impudent, malicious, scandalous, and seditious libel, falsely and most injuriously reflecting upon, and aspersing the proceedings of the house, tending to create misapprehensions in the minds of the people, to the great dishonour of the said house, and in violation of the privileges thereof. They furthermore presented an address to the king, desiring his majesty would be graciously pleased to give directions to his attorney-general to prosecute the authors or author, the printers or printer, and the publishers or publisher of the said scandalous libel, that they might be brought to condign punishment. Directions were accordingly given for this purpose, and a prosecution commenced against the publisher, who had some reason to be dismayed, considering the great weight of influence he was doomed to encounter—influence arising from a prosecution of the crown, instituted at the request, and founded on a vote, of the house of commons. Nevertheless, when the cause was heard before the lord-chief justice of England, a jury of free-born Englishmen, citizens of London, asserted their privilege of judging the law as well as the fact, and acquitted the defendant with a truly admirable spirit of independency. They considered the pamphlet as an appeal against oppression; and, convinced that the contents were true, they could not in conscience adjudge it a false libel, even though it had been so declared by one of the branches of the legislature.

1752

The commons, in regulating the supplies of the ensuing year, voted the continuation of eighteen thousand eight hundred and fifty-seven men for the land-service, though not without some opposition from certain patriots, who, rather from a sense of duty than from any hope of influencing the majority, affirmed that sixteen thousand men in time of peace would answer all the ends proposed by a standing army. The number of seamen was fixed at ten thousand; large sums were granted to make up deficiencies, and fulfil the engagements of the crown with the electors of Bavaria and Saxony, as well as for the maintenance of Nova Scotia and Georgia, and the castles on the coast of Guinea; and one hundred and twelve thousand one hundred and fifty-two pounds, three shillings and threepence, were voted, as a full compensation to the old royal African company for their exclusive charter and property, to be applied for the relief of their creditors. *

* These expenses were defrayed by a continuation of the
duties on malt, &c; a land-tax at three shillings in the
pound; a duty on licences, to be yearly paid by pawnbrokers
and dealers in secondhand goods, within the bills of
mortality; the sum of one million four hundred thousand
pounds advanced by the bank, according to a proposal made
for that purpose; five hundred thousand pounds to be issued
from the sinking-fund; a duty laid on gum Senegal; and the
continuation of divers other occasional impositions. The
grants for the year amounted to something less than four
millions, and the provisions made for this expense exceeded
it in the sum of two hundred and seventy-one thousand and
twenty-four pounds, ten shillings and sixpence halfpenny.

The laws enacted for the encouragement of traffic, and the regulations of civil polity, consisted in an act for licensing pawnbrokers, and for the more effectual preventing the receiving of stolen goods; another for preventing thefts and robberies, by which places of entertainment, dancing, and music, in London, Westminster, and within twenty miles of the capital, were suppressed and prohibited, unless the proprietors of them could obtain licenses from the justices of the peace, empowered for that purpose; a third for annexing the forfeited estates in Scotland unalienably to the crown, after having made satisfaction to the lawful creditors; establishing a method of leasing these estates, and applying the rents and profits of them for the better civilizing and improving the highlands, and preventing future disorders in that part of the united kingdom. Nothing could be more salutary than the purposes of these regulations. The suburbs of the metropolis abounded with an incredible number of public houses, which continually resounded with the noise of riot and intemperance; they were the haunts of idleness, fraud, and rapine; and the seminaries of drunkenness, debauchery, extravagance, and every vice incident to human nature; yet the suppression of these receptacles of infamy was attended with an inconvenience, which, in some cases, arose even to a degree of oppression. The justices being vested by the legislature with the power of granting or refusing licenses, were constituted, in effect, the arbiters on whose decision the fortunes and livelihood of many individuals absolutely depended. Many of those who exercised this species of magistracy within the bills of mortality, were, to the reproach of government, men of profligate lives, needy, mean, ignorant, and rapacious, and often acted from the most scandalous principles of selfish avarice.