The attention of the Parliament was, during the remainder of the session, chiefly occupied by commercial questions.  Some of those questions required so much investigation, and gave occasion to so much dispute, that the prorogation did not take place till the fifth of July.  There was consequently some illness and much discontent among both Lords and Commons.  For, in that age, the London season usually ended soon after the first notes of the cuckoo had been heard, and before the poles had been decked for the dances and mummeries which welcomed the genial May day of the ancient calendar.  Since the year of the Revolution, a year which was an exception to all ordinary rules, the members of the two Houses had never been detained from their woods and haycocks even so late as the beginning of June.

The Commons had, soon after they met, appointed a Committee to enquire into the state of trade, and had referred to this Committee several petitions from merchants and manufacturers who complained that they were in danger of being undersold, and who asked for additional protection.

A highly curious report on the importation of silks and the exportation of wool was soon presented to the House.  It was in that age believed by all but a very few speculative men that the sound commercial policy was to keep out of the country the delicate and brilliantly tinted textures of southern looms, and to keep in the country the raw material on which most of our own looms were employed.  It was now fully proved that, during eight years of war, the textures which it was thought desirable to keep out had been constantly coming in, and the material which it was thought desirable to keep in had been constantly going out.  This interchange, an interchange, as it was imagined, pernicious to England, had been chiefly managed by an association of Huguenot refugees, residing in London.  Whole fleets of boats with illicit cargoes had been passing and repassing between Kent and Picardy.  The loading and unloading had taken place sometimes in Romney Marsh, sometimes on the beach under the cliffs between Dover and Folkstone.  All the inhabitants of the south eastern coast were in the plot.  It was a common saying among them that, if a gallows were set up every quarter of a mile along the coast, the trade would still go on briskly.  It had been discovered, some years before, that the vessels and the hiding places which were necessary to the business of the smuggler had frequently afforded accommodation to the traitor.  The report contained fresh evidence upon this point.  It was proved that one of the contrabandists had provided the vessel in which the ruffian O’Brien had carried Scum Goodman over to France.