138 A. D. 1 727. 



South-fea company in the year 1720, were now paid off by the finking 

 fund. 



By another ftatute of this fefllon, for the regulation of the woollen 

 manufacture, &c. the juflices of the counties of Gloucefter, M^ilts, and 

 Somerfet, were empowered to appoint a certain number of infpedors in 

 each of thofe counties, with a falary of L30 each yearly ; who fliould, 

 on every week-day, have power to enter into and infped all mills, work- 

 houfes, and tenter-grounds, of clothiers, &.c. concerned in manufactur- 

 ing and milling mixed or medley woollen broad cloths, for meafuring, 

 and otherwife examining the goodnefs thereof; and to certify their fuf- 

 ficlency by a leaden feal with the infpeftor's name. This office is in- 

 ftead of the antient one of aulneger, and alfo of the fubfequent infpec- 

 tors, who, for want of fufficient checks, were become ufelefs. Thefe 

 infpedors were to lay their regifter books before every general quarter- 

 feflion for each county, with an account of all penalties and forfeitures 

 incurred by the makers of infufficient cloths. 



By another ftatute of this feflion, for preventing frauds and abufes in 

 the dying trade, penalties are inflided on dyers of black bays, and other 

 woollen goods, without woad, indigo, or madder. And a penalty is al- 

 fo inflided on every perfon ufing logwood in the dying of blue in any 

 kind of woollen goods. 



After all the buftle which the Auftrian Netherlands and the court 

 of Vienna had fo long made about their Oftend company's trade to the 

 Indies, the arguments urged by Britain and Holland were fo cogent, and 

 fo effedually powerful, that the emperornow found himfelf neceflitated, 

 firfl: to fufpend that company's charter for feven years, and afterwards to 

 revoke it entirely. 



The king of Spain having now in vain laid fiege to Gibraltar, before 

 any formal declaration of war againft the crown of Great-Britain, he at 

 the fame time ordered a feizure of all the efFeds of the South-fea com- 

 pany in America, with the great fliip Prince Frederick and its cargo at 

 La Vera Cruz, to the amount of upwards of Li 20,000 flerling. And 

 this was the fecond time that the court of Madrid made fuch fudden 

 feizures ; whereby the precarioufnefs of this company's trade to the 

 Spanifli Wcfl-Indies did now but too plainly appear. 



At midfummer this year the redudion of the interefl on the national 

 debt from 5 to 4 per cent took place ; whereby the famous finking fund 

 was increalcd to above one million per annum. Had thofe, whofe pro- 

 vince it properly was, kept pundually to the paying off at leaft one mil- 

 lion of the public debts annually, from this year 1727 to the year 1739, 

 when we declared war againft Spain, in how much eafier a fituation would 

 the nation then have been ? Inftead of which frugal meafure, that facred 

 fund has been, either diredly or indiredly, facrilegioufly and wantonly- 

 violated, to the inconceivable damage of the nation's commerce, which 



