The law which was about to expire had lasted eight years.  It was renewed for only two years.  It appears, from an entry in the journals of the Commons which unfortunately is defective, that a division took place on an amendment about the nature of which we are left entirely in the dark.  The votes were ninety-nine to eighty.  In the Lords it was proposed, according to the suggestion offered fifty years before by Milton and stolen from him by Blount, to exempt from the authority of the licenser every book which bore the name of an author or publisher.  This amendment was rejected; and the bill passed, but not without a protest signed by eleven peers who declared that they could not think it for the public interest to subject all learning and true information to the arbitrary will and pleasure of a mercenary and perhaps ignorant licenser.  Among those who protested were Halifax, Shrewsbury and Mulgrave, three noblemen belonging to different political parties, but all distinguished by their literary attainments.  It is to be lamented that the signatures of Tillotson and Burnet, who were both present on that day, should be wanting.  Dorset was absent.399

Blount, by whose exertions and machinations the opposition to the censorship had been raised, did not live to see that opposition successful.  Though not a very young man, he was possessed by an insane passion for the sister of his deceased wife.  Having long laboured in vain to convince the object of his love that she might lawfully marry him, he at last, whether from weariness of life, or in the hope of touching her heart, inflicted on himself a wound of which, after languishing long, he died.  He has often been mentioned as a blasphemer and selfmurderer.  But the important service which, by means doubtless most immoral and dishonourable, he rendered to his country, has passed almost unnoticed.400

Late in this busy and eventful session the attention of the Houses was called to the state of Ireland.  The government of that kingdom had, during the six months which followed the surrender of Limerick, been in an unsettled state.  It was not till the Irish troops who adhered to Sarsfield had sailed for France, and till the Irish troops who had made their election to remain at home had been disbanded, that William at length put forth a proclamation solemnly announcing the termination of the civil war.  From the hostility of the aboriginal inhabitants, destitute as they now were of chiefs, of arms and of organization, nothing was to be apprehended beyond occasional robberies and murders.  But the war cry of the Irishry had scarcely died away when the first faint murmurs of the Englishry began to be heard.  Coningsby was during some months at the head of the administration.  He soon made himself in the highest degree odious to the dominant caste.  He was an unprincipled man; he was insatiable of riches; and he was in a situation in which riches were easily to be obtained by an unprincipled man.