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.

LAW RELATING TO THE FORFEITED ESTATES IN SCOTLAND.

The law relating to the highlands of Scotland was well calculated for
promoting, among the inhabitants of that country, such a spirit of
industry as might detach them from their dange