and the judges were
ordered to prepare a bill for the same purpose, to be laid before that
house in the next session.

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.

PROCEEDINGS RELATIVE TO THE AFRICAN COMPANY.

As we have already given a detail of the trial of sir John Mordaunt, it
will be unnecessary to recapitulate an