370 A. D. 1763. 



in the year 1763, the prizes in which (being nearly the fame us in the 

 laft lottery) were to be flock bearing four per cent interefl, and the 

 blanks were to be rated at £^ ; that is to fay, they were entitled to an 

 annual income of four fliillings each. 



March 31'^ — In order to provide for the interefl: of the new funded 

 debts, an additional duty of £% per tun was laid on B'rench wine and 

 vinegar, and £4. per tun on all other wine and vinegar, payable upon 

 importation; n\i'o £2 per tun on foreign cyder and perry imported, and 

 four {fillings per hogfhead on cyder and perry made in Great Britain. 

 [3 Geo. Ill, c. 12.] 



As foon as the propofal for laying a duty of excife upon cyder and 

 perry was publicly known, an outcry was raifed againll it, which was 

 more violent, and more general, than any fimilar explofion of dif- 

 content fmce the year 1733, when a great minifler was on the point of 

 falling a facrillce to an excife fcheme. The tax was reprobated as 

 partial and oppreffivc, laying the burthens of the whole nation upon 

 that part of the country where thole liquors were ufcd, and grofsly 

 violating the liberty of the people, by fubjcding their houfes to the 

 vifitation and fearch of revenue officers. The clamour, though vehe- 

 mently fupportcd by the city of London, however, died away, and the 

 tax took place. It mufl be acknowleged, that the drinkers of cyder 

 and perry ought to contribute to the national expenditure, as well as 

 the drinkers of malt liquor; and if they had hitherto been indulged or 

 overlooked, that was no good reafon for a continuance of the exemp- 

 tion. After all, the duty was lighter than that on malt liquor ; private 

 perfons, upon paying a compofition according to the number of their 

 families, were exempted from the vifitation of the excife officers ; and 

 occupiers of houfes rated not above forty fliillings a year to the land tax, 

 or making not above four hogflieads in the year, were entirely exempted 

 from paying any duty : fo that it was upon the whole probably as un- 

 exceptionable as any excife duty can poflibly be. 



As an inflance of the opulence and liberality of the Eafl, we may 

 briefly notice the will of Omichund, an eminent black m.erchant at 

 Calcutta, wherein legacies were bequeathed to charitable inftitutions in 

 many different parts of the world, and among the reft confiderably 

 above ^^5000 to the Magdalen and Foundling hofpitals of London, 

 which money was actually remitted by his executor. 



The encouragement for indigo produced in the Britifli plantations, 

 was continued till the 25th of March 1770, and thence to the end of 

 the next feflion of parliament ; but the bounty was now reduced to four 

 pence a pound, to commence from the expiration ot the time limited 

 for the former bounty. 



So much were the Venetians now reduced from their antient domi- 

 nion in the Mediterranean fea, that they paid down 50,000 ducats, and 



