compelled to turn his attention to the existing burthens of the state, and to devise the necessary means for winding up the accounts of the war. He brought the subject before the House on the last day of June, when he entered into a recapitulation of the supplies which had been granted by Parliament, and the ways and means for raising them. By his statement it appeared that six millions of the supplies voted had been left unprovided for, and he proposed to raise that sum by a loan.-With a view to procure the most favourable terms for the public, in negotiating the loan, he departed from the usual mode of proceeding, and resolved to dispose of it to the best bidder.-Hitherto, the loan had been a source of patronage to the minister, who had an opportunity of obliging his friends and favourites with any portion of it, and they, from the premium which it generally bore, before any part of the money had been advanced, derived from it a considerable profit. This being obviously disadvantageous to the public, Mr. Pitt, who never suffered any motives of a private or personal nature to interfere, for a moment, with his plans for the national service, determined to adopt a different system. He accordingly concluded, with the best bidder, to give for every £100 subscribed, stock and annuities to the amount of £99 19 2, with

six lottery tickets as a douceur, to every subscriber of a £1000, and so in proportion, for every greater or smaller sum.

The unfunded debt, at this time, amounted to upwards of twelve millions in navy bills, and one million in ordnance debentures. He proposed to fund only seven millions of this debt in the present year, and to leave the remainder for the next. Still, as most of the navy bills bore interest, and as the interest on that part which he did not mean to fund this year, would amount to 280,000l. he resolved to provide for the interest on the whole. The sum, then, necessary for paying the interest on the loan, and the whole of the above debt, would amount to something more than 900,000l. and if the taxes which he had to propose, should produce the sums at which he rated them, there would be a surplus in favour of the public, of somewhat more than 30,000l. These taxes were one halfpenny per pound on candles; half-a-crown per thousand on bricks; from three to thirty shillings per thousand on tiles; ten shillings on every pleasure horse; two guineas on every race horse; a small tax on ribands and gauzes; licenses for retailing excisable liquors; qualifications for shooting; paper; hackney-coaches; silver and gold plate; lead exported; increase of postage of letters; and regulations of franking. A tax

was proposed on coals, but rejected. The other taxes passed with little opposition.

of

Mr. Pitt, when he proposed these taxes, declared, that he had studiously endeavoured to do what he held to be the indispensable duty every person who stood in his situationto disguise nothing from the public which affected their real interest, but to lay every particular of such description before them; and, however great the personal risk and inconvenience, however great the danger of incurring popular odium, by proposing heavy burthens on the people, might be, not to shrink from that painful part of duty, if such burthens were, by the exigency of affairs, necessary to be imposed.No minister, assuredly, ever entertained more just notions of his duty, and none ever discharged it more firmly, or more conscientiously. Mr. Pitt having thus attended, as far as the time would admit, to every subject recommended to the notice of Parliament, in the speech from the Throne at the opening of the session, and having provided for every exigency, had leisure to turn his mind to those farther projects of improvement, which he had still in contemplation. Before, however, the, parliament was prorogued, Mr. Dundas brought forward a motion for the restoration of the estates forfeited in Scotland, in consequence of the rebellion of

1745. The object of this motion was to relieve a body of men, whose loyalty was unimpeached, from the penalties attached to the disloyalty of their ancestors; or, to speak with greater accuracy, to the misguided loyalty of their ancestors. For the unhappy noblemen and gentry, who had joined the standard of prince Charles, in the year 1745, acted from a principle of rooted attachment to the family of a king whom they had ever considered to be their lawful sovereign, and their sworn allegiance to whom they did not think that either his misconduct, or any earthly power, could compel them to transfer, or even justify them in transferring, to another. However mistaken, therefore, the application of the principle might be, the principle itself was entitled to respect; and the example which state policy, if not state necessity, required, being once made, there could be no good reason for extending it to the successors of the suffering nobles and gentry. Mr. Dundas, therefore, very properly enlarged on the wisdom and the justice of the principles, which were so self-evident as not to require, for their support, the opinion of a Chatham, which he adduced in their favour. It enabled him, however, to pay a merited compliment to the son of that statesman: he said, he drew an auspicious omen from the reflection, that the first blow had been given to the proscription by

the Earl of Chatham; and he trusted, that the remains of a system, which, whether dictated at first by narrow views, or by sound policy, ought certainly to be temporary, would be completely annihilated under the administration of his son.

He pronounced a warm panegyric on the persons whose cause he had undertaken to plead. He observed, that many of them had distinguished themselves in the late war; and that there was scarcely a family among them, which had not atoned, with their blood, for the errors of their ancestors. He asserted, with equal confidence and truth, that the spirit which had rendered the inhabitants of the highlands disaffected to the then existing government, had long since disappeared, and that the King had not, in the whole extent of his dominions, more loyal subjects. As such it would be magnanimous to treat them, and to cancel for ever the offences of their fathers. Nor would the proceeding be more liberal than politic; since its effect would be to prevent the increasing emigration of the highlanders, which nothing could do, but the return of their long-lost lords, for whom they felt unabated affection and

reverence.

In the Commons, the justice and policy of the measure was so generally felt, as to preclude