SCHEME IN FAVOUR OF THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL.

His majesty having recommended the care of the Foundling hospital to the house of commons, which cheerfully granted forty thousand pounds for the support of that charity, the growing annual expense of it appeared worthy of further consideration, and leave was granted to bring in a bill for obliging all the parishes of England and Wales to keep registers of all their deaths, births, and marriages, that from these a fund might be raised towards the support of the said hospital. The bill was accordingly prepared by a committee appointed for the purpose; but before the house could take the report into consideration, the parliament was prorogued.—The proprietors of the privateer called the Antigallican, which had taken a rich French ship homeward bound from China, and carried her into Cadiz, where the Spanish government had wrested her by violence from the captors, and delivered her to the French owners, now presented a petition to the house of commons, complaining of this interposition as an act of partiality and injustice; representing the great expense at which the privateer had been equipped, the legality of the capture, the loss and hardships which they the petitioners had sustained, and imploring such relief as the house should think requisite. Though these allegations were supported by a species of evidence that seemed strong and convincing, and it might be thought incumbent on the parliament to vindicate the honour of the nation, when thus insulted by a foreign power, the house, upon this occasion, treated the petition with the most mortifying neglect, either giving little credit to the assertions it contained, or unwilling to take any step which might at this juncture embroil the nation with the court of Spain on such a frivolous subject. True it is, the Spanish government alleged, in their own justification, that the prize was taken under the guns of Corunna, insomuch that the shot fired by the privateer entered that place, and damaged some houses; but this allegation was never properly sustained, and the prize was certainly condemned as legal by the court of admiralty at Gibraltar.