The Virginia Gazette

May 29. Yesterday the sheriffs presented a petition from the corporation of London, setting forth the mischiefs with which the East India bill was pregnant, stating the pernicious tendency of several clauses contained therein, complaining in very spirited terms of the violation of charter, and suggesting the alarm it would give to every corporate body throughout the kingdom should the said bill pass into a law. The petition therefore prayed that the city might be heard by counsel against the bill, and it was ordered to lie upon the table.

The House then proceeded to business, and took into consideration the petition from Messrs. Adams, relative to the disposal of their effects by a lottery; which meeting with great opposition from several of the members, who strongly insisted upon the absurdity of granting an indulgence to one or two persons, which must be denied to others, though equally well entitled by every claim of necessity or merit, the question being put, the House divided, when the majority appeared in favour of Messrs. Adams.

Messrs. Mansfield and Adair, the counsel appointed by the East India company to state their objections to the East India bill, were then called in. Mr. Mansfield spoke three quarters of an hour, Mr. Adair half an hour; when they were ordered to withdraw, and the debates commenced. Almost each sentence of the bill afforded a topic for censure, and it required the utmost stretch of the abilities of the minister and his adherents to defend their favourite tract of despotism from the objections urged with acrimony by every honest member in the House. Clause by clause was disputed, and each disputant tried his ingenuity at filling up the blanks. Mr. Dowdeswell arraigned, in the severest terms, almost the whole of the bill; he called it a "medley of inconsistencies, dictated by tyranny, yet bearing throughout each line the mark of ignorance."