Anstruther had been tried before the Council for his unwarrantable behaviour in his government a few years ago, and a heavy number of articles proved against him; but Lord Granville defeated the charge by calling in a Minorchese, and talking to him for an hour in Spanish, and then assuring the Council that the witness had fully justified the General. The secret of Erskine’s being willing to drop his accusation was on receiving intimation that Anstruther, if pushed, would recriminate on General St. Clair, Sir Henry’s uncle, who, on the expedition to Port L’Orient, had used the most violent methods to bring a Court Martial over to his opinion, and had abused Lord John Murray, the President of it, in the grossest terms, who, on this occasion, begged Mr. Fox to tell the King and Duke from him, that his only reason for having taken no steps to complain of that usage, was for fear of increasing the heats already raised on the Mutiny Bill; but that at a proper time he would seek some redress. A committee had been appointed to consider on amending the laws enacted against the vices of the lower people, which were increased to a degree of robbery and murder beyond example. Fielding, a favourite author of the age, had published an admirable treatise on the laws in question, and agreed with what was observed on this occasion, that these outrages proceeded from gin. The depopulation of the city was ascribed to the same cause, which gave Nugent occasion very properly to offer again his Bill of general Naturalization, a favourite Whig point, overthrown in the Queen’s time by the narrow ignorance of the Tories, and defeated in the first session of this Parliament by Mr. Pelham’s complaisance for Sir John Barnard. It was now received, and the second reading ordered for the 20th, the day before which a petition was presented against it from the city of London. The next day they presented another against gin, on which old Horace Walpole attacked Sir John Barnard on the absurdity of their remonstrating on the decrease of people, and their making interest against replacing them by foreigners. Nugent ridiculed him on the same topic, and made a distinction of humour between the good citizen in his fur gown and corporate capacity, and really wishing well in his mercantile capacity to trade and populousness: and he observed, that even in this enlightened age, the city of London had not got beyond the prejudices of the reign of Harry the Third, the laws of that age against aliens, and the reasoning of the present petition against naturalizing foreigners being exactly the same.