138] ANNUAL REGISTER, ib^v 



employed in putting the cargo on 

 board, died before the succeeding 

 day. He was happy, however, to 

 assure the house that no danger of 

 any lind was now to be appre- 

 hendedfrom the circumstance. The 

 thanks of the house were then 

 voted to this message, and a select 

 committee was ordered to report 

 the same, with their opinions there- 

 on, to the house. In consequence 

 of a report from that committee, tlie 

 house of commons, in a committee 

 of supply, on the twenty-third of 

 May, granted, for the satisfaction 

 of parties who had suffered loss, by 

 the destruction of the three ships 

 from Mogadore,* the sum of 

 41,400/. The subsequent appear- 

 ance of the plague, at Cadiz, and 

 other parts of Spain, renders it al- 

 most certain, that the precaution of 

 ships and cargoes, from Mogadore, 

 performing quarantine, was not un- 

 necessary. There are few instan- 

 ces in which the vigilance, pru- 

 dence, and justice of government 

 have been more apparent than in 

 the whole of its conduct in that 

 business. 



There was another danger which 

 threatened the British nation, not so 

 great, certainly, as famine or pesti- 

 lence, but which, in the opinion of 

 not a few of the legislators, called 

 loudly for timely prevention. This 

 was the increase of popery, likely to 

 ensue from the continuance, or ad- 

 mission of new members into mo- 

 nastic societies in England. On 

 the motion of sir H. Mildmay, the 

 house of commons, on the twenty- 

 second of May, resolved itself into 

 a committee of the whole house, to 

 consider of an act made in the thir- 

 ty-first year of the reign of his pre- 



sent majesty, intituled " An Act to 

 relieve, upon Conditions, and under 

 Restrictions, the Persons therein de- 

 scribed, from certain penalties and 

 Disabilities, to which Papists, or 

 Persons professing the popish Reli- 

 gion, were by law subject." Sir 

 H. Mildmay, after expressing, in 

 the strongest terras, his extreme sa- 

 tisfaction in the bounty and indul- 

 gence that had been shewn by this 

 country to the French emigrants, 

 doing justice to the most regular 

 and peaceable demeanor of that un- 

 fortunate class of men, and what he 

 termed, not unhappily, their most 

 unassuming and mosl unohirusive 

 gratitude; and, also, after disclaim- 

 ing the contracted andodiousspirit of 

 religiousin tolerance, observed, that, 

 as he conceived, it could never be 

 the intention of government to en- 

 courage the re-establishment of mo- 

 nastic institutions in this protestant 

 country. However it might be to 

 our htmour to have suffered those 

 individuals, who had previously 

 bound themselves to a monastic life, 

 to discharge, in this country, those 

 vows, from which, in their mind, 

 no human power could release them, 

 such indulgence ought to expire 

 with the life of the present incum- 

 bents. We ought not, in his opi- 

 nion, to suffer the vacancies, which 

 might happen to rise in such com- 

 munities, to be filled up by subjects 

 of this country, actually since their 

 residence here, but should, on all 

 grounds, carefully guard against the 

 admission of any new members into 

 those societies, whose first obliga- 

 tion, on entering into them, was 

 subversive of those laws and liber- 

 ties, which the wisdom and policy 

 of our ancestors long since intro- 



* The Aurora, the Mentor, and the Lark. 



