On the 18th the General Court of India Proprietors imitating and actuated by members of Parliament, took a violent step, and at eleven at night when all were retired but one hundred and fifty, balloted for a petition against the Bill to regulate dividends; and so impetuous were they, that they ordered the ballot should be closed at midnight. Two persons protested against that measure. Such indecent behaviour being stated to the House of Commons the next day, the petition was rejected: but new proposals made by the directors were well accepted, and the accommodation was voted on the 22nd.
On the 21st the Duke of Richmond moved the Lords for papers relating to a plan for a Civil Government at Quebec. It had been drawn by the last ministers, and delivered to Lord Northington for his opinion, who had never thought more on the subject. The motion was levelled at him; and to please the Rockinghams, the Bedfords consulted with them at Richmond-House previous to the motion: but it was baffled by giving them the papers, after Lord Sandwich had been personally offensive in his speech to the Duke of Grafton. Lord Gower the next day renewed the question on the Act of the Assembly of Massachusets. It had been set aside by the Privy Council, but not declared void _ab initio_, as Lord Mansfield urged it ought to be, and as Lord Chief Justice Wilmot now maintained too, though he had twice given his opinion to the contrary; yet, though preferred by the Chancellor, he had now been gained by Mansfield. It was a day of much expectation. The Opposition had even hopes of success, having moved for papers which would resolve the House into a committee, in which proxies are never counted; and in proxies lay the material strength of the Court, who, if beaten, could only have recovered the question on the report. Lord Mansfield, to interpose solemnity, proposed, as his way was, that the Judges should be consulted, and spoke with singular art and subtlety, disclaiming a spirit of opposition. The Chancellor and Lord Northington treated him most severely, the former taxing him directly with faction, and telling him the motion was complicated, involved, irregular, and yet betraying the marks of a lawyer. He quoted, too, a case in point in which the late Lord Hardwicke had been of a contrary opinion. The House sat till near ten, a late hour for that assembly, when the motion was rejected by only 62 to 56. The day was made memorable by the Duke of York, who spoke, and very poorly, against the Court, but did not stay to vote. The two other Princes voted with their brother’s Administration. Seven bishops were in the minority,--the consequence of the Crown permitting great lords to nominate to bishopricks: the reverend fathers sometimes having at least gratitude, or farther expectations, if they have no patriotism. The Judges said afterwards that they would have excused themselves from delivering their opinions, as the matter might come before them in the Courts below.