f it, the payment
was illegal. Mr. Latton refusing to comply with this arbitrary demand,
his house was surrounded by a detachment of soldiers, who violently
dragged his secretary from his presence, and threw him into a dismal
subterranean dungeon, where he continued twenty days. The English
slaves, to the number of twenty-seven, were condemned to the same fate;
the ambassador himself was degraded from his character, deprived of
his allowance, and sequestered from all communication. All the letters
directed to him were intercepted, and interpreted to the alcayde; two
negro porters were intrusted with the keys of all his apartments, and
a couple of soldiers posted at his chamber-door; nay, this Moorish
governor threatened to load him with irons, and violently seized part
of the presents designed by his Britannic majesty for the emperor. At
length, finding that neither Mr. Latton nor the governor of Gibraltar,
to whom he had written, would deposit the money, without fresh
instructions from the court of London, the barbarian thought proper to
relax in his severity: the prisoners were enlarged, the restrictions
removed from the person of the ambassador, and, after all these
indignities offered to the honour of the British nation, the balance was
paid, and the affair quietly adjusted.

DISTURBANCES IN ENGLAND.

Britain, in the meanwhile, was altogether barren of events which
might deserve a place in a general history. Commerce and manufacture
flourished again, to such a degree of increase as had never been known
in the island; but this advantage was attended with an irresistible tide
of luxury and excess, which flowed through all degrees of the people,
breaking down all the mounds of civil polity, and opening a way for
license and immorality. The highways were infested with rapine and
assassination; the cities teemed with the brutal votaries of lewdness,
intemperance, and profligacy. The whole land was overspread with a
succession of tumult, riot, and insurrection, excited in different parts
of the kingdom by the erection of new turnpikes, which the legislature
judged necessary for the convenience of inland carriage. In order
to quell these disturbances, recourse was had to the military power;
several individuals were slain, and some were executed as examples.

SESSION OPENED.

In the month of November the session of parliament was opened with a
speech from the throne, in which his majesty expressed a particul