he navy should be referred to
a select committee." The ministry discouraged all such prying measures:
a debate was produced, the house divided, and the motion was rejected.
Such was the fate of s motion for raising the supplies within the year,
made by Mr. Sandys, and supported by sir John Barnard, Mr. Willimot, and
other patriots, who demonstrated that this was a speedy and practicable
expedient for discharging the national debt, lowering the interest
of money, reducing the price of labour, and encouraging a spirit of
commerce.

BILL FOR THE RELIEF OF QUAKERS IN THE ARTICLE OF TITHES.

The bill for limiting the number of officers in the house of commons
was again revived. The king was empowered to borrow six hundred thousand
pounds, chargeable on the sinking fund, for the service of the ensuing
year, though this power was not easily granted; and the house resolved
to lay a duty of twenty shillings per gallon on all spirituous liquors,
after it had appeared to the committee appointed for that purpose, that
those spirits were pernicious to the health and morals of the people.
To this resolution was added another, which amounted to a total
prohibition, namely, that fifty pounds should be yearly paid to his
majesty for a license to be annually taken out by every person who
should vend, barter, or utter any such spirituous liquors. Mr. Walter
Plummer, in a well concerted speech, moved for the repeal of some
clauses in the Test act: these he represented as a species of
persecution, in which protestant dissenters were confounded with the
Roman catholics and enemies to the establishment. He was sustained by
lord Polworth and Mr. Heathcote; but sir Robert Walpole was joined by
Mr. Shippen against the motion, as dangerous to the established church;
and the question being put, it was carried in the negative.

{1736}

When sir Joseph Jekyll presented to the house, according to order,
a bill founded on the resolutions they had taken against spirituous
liquors, sir Robert Walpole acquainted them, by his majesty's command,
that as the alterations proposed to be made by that bill in the duties
charged upon all spirituous liquors might, in a great degree, affect
some part of the civil list revenues, his majesty, for the sake of
remedying so great an evil as was intended by that bill to be prevented,
did consent to accept any other revenue of equal value, to be settled
and appropriated in lieu of his interest in the said dutie