iv Report of the Committee.

for Land Business, 1679—1684, were transferred from the Office of the
Clerk of the Court of Appeals to the Land Office. These volumes will
be found described by Dr. Browne on a subsequent page, and will be
asked for when occasion requires their use in Baltimore.

Your Committee believe that the work that has been done is good
work well done, and that it deserves from the General Assembly of our
State a liberal appropriation, so that the work can be carried on with
more dispatch. Two volumes a year could readily be arranged and
printed, and a sum sufficient for this number of volumes ought to be
appropriated.

The Society may with truth be said to have rescued these valuable
Archives from oblivion if not from destruction. They are made accessible
in the original (as well as in the printed reproductions) to the student of
our early history, and are secure at the same time in the expensive fire-
proof vault specially constructed by the Society for their protection, and
the services of the Librarian of the Society, without cost to the State, are
always cheerfully rendered in facilitating investigation, arranging confused
material and removing difficulties and obscurities.

It could not be expected that the work done and proposed could be
executed at any other time, or in any other way, with so little expense
to the State. The Society's share of the work is entirely gratuitous, the
compensation of the faithful and efficient services of the Editor, Dr.
William Hand Browne, is merely nominal, the deciphering and accurate
transcribing of Miss Lucy H. Harrison is at ordinary rather than expert's
rates, and the admirable work of the printer at the lowest rates for which
private individuals in the management of personal business could obtain
the same.

Respectfully submitted,

JOHN W. M. LEE,
BRADLEY T. JOHNSON,
HENRY STOCKBRIDGE,

Committee.

The above report having been laid before the Society at its regular
meeting on October 12th, 1885, was, on motion, accepted, approved
and ordered to be printed.

JOHN H. B. LATROBE,

President.
MENDES COHEN,

Corresponding Secretary.