25th.--Lord Winchelsea had summoned the Lords to consider an Admiralty Bill, which had passed the Commons without opposition, and which was designed to commute the punishment of transportation into working in the Dockyards. Bills of less invidious appearance had often raised a flame in combustible seasons: this seemed to introduce a kind of galley slavery, yet was really converting a species of disgraceful criminals, who only corrupt our Plantations, into useful members of society. Could the monthly shambles at Tyburn (that scene that shocks humanity, and reproaches our Police!) be exchanged for severe labour in the same way, it would reflect honour on a Legislature, which ought not to wanton in such punishment of its members as death and banishment, but to extract public utility, even from crimes. The Duke of Newcastle, fearing to be attacked himself, and the Chancellor, as apprehensive for his silent son-in-law, Lord Anson, the head of the Admiralty and patron of the Bill, prevailed on Lord Northumberland to rise, commend the Bill, and then move to have it put off for six weeks. The Duke of Bedford called him to order for entering upon the Bill before it was read. 28th.--Lord Tyrawley was sent to Lisbon, to accommodate some differences which had been occasioned by our Captains openly running Portugal pieces, which had used to be brought on board our ships by the _decent_ intervention of the Monks. The same day was read for the first time a Bill to empower the Government to purchase, at the rate of about an hundred thousand pounds, the estates in Scotland forfeited by the late Rebellion, and which the King was to cede to the public, in order to have colonies settled on them, especially of Foreign Protestants. The necessity of the purchase was pretended to arise from mortgages on them, and which would even consume the property in a few years, and pass them from the King’s hands into those of the mortgagees. Grants of money to Scotland have ever been suspicious: the influence of the Duke of Argyle over the ductility of the Ministry was most notorious; the claims now erected on these forfeitures most incredible; and the establishment of Colonies in parts so barren, so uninviting, of such unpleasant neighbourhood, most improbable and impracticable. One circumstance alone, of public notoriety, staggered all credit in the sum demanded. Lord Lovat, at the bar of the House of Lords, had declared that his was the best estate in Scotland, for there were no debts upon it--it now appeared charged with a mortgage of thirty thousand pounds! Vyner, Northey, Beckford, Sydenham, Fazakerley, Prowse, and the Whig-General Mordaunt, opposed the Bill. The Scotch Lord Advocate, Mr. Pelham, Sir William Yonge, and Oswald, with fine warmth supported it, and it passed that day without a division; and again on the second reading, March 2d, when it was faintly opposed by the same people, and defended by the same, and by the Attorney-General.[213]