e commissioners of the excise, and
justices of the peace, for the appearance of persons
offending against, or for forfeitures incurred by, the laws
of excise. As some doubts had arisen with respect to the
method of summoning in such cases, this bill, which obtained
the royal assent in due course, enacted, that the summons
left at the houses, or usual place of residence, or with the
wife, child, or menial servants of the person so summoned,
should be held as legal notice, as well as the leaving such
notice at the house, workhouse, warehouse, shop, cellar,
vault, or usual place of residence, of such person, directed
to him by his right or assumed name; and all dealers in
coffee, tea, or chocolate, were subjected to the penalty of
twenty pounds, as often as they should neglect to attend the
commissioners of excise, when summoned in this manner.

In the month of April, a bill was brought in for the more effectual
preventing the fraudulent importation of cambrics; and while it was
under deliberation, several merchants and wholesale drapers of the city
of London presented a petition, representing the grievances to which
they, and many thousand of other traders, would be subjected, should
the bill, as it then stood, be passed into a law. According to their
request, they were heard by their counsel on the merits of this
remonstrance, and some amendments were made to the bill in their
favour. At length it received the royal assent, and became a law to the
following effect: It enacted, that no cambrics, French lawns, or linens
of this kind usually entered under the denomination of cambrics, should
be imported after the first day of next August, but in bales, cases,
or boxes, covered with sackcloth or canvas, containing each one hundred
whole pieces, or two hundred half pieces, on penalty of forfeiting the
whole; that cambrics and French lawns should be imported for exportation
only, lodged in the king's warehouses, and delivered out under like
security, and restrictions as prohibited East India merchandise, and,
on importation, pay only the half subsidy: that all cambrics and French
lawns in the custody of any persons should be deposited, by the first of
August, in the king's warehouses, the bonds thereupon be delivered
up, and the drawback on exportation paid; yet the goods should not be
delivered out again but for exportation: that cambrics and French lawns