viii                  Preface.

             Oppressive as this law was to many, its validity was not questioned

           for seventy years. For one thing, as the quality of tobacco was not

           specified, the tax-payers usually paid the tax in the very poorest and

           cheapest sort, so that the stipends of the clergy were not only inade

           quate, but even beggarly. In consequence it was hard to get clergy

           men of any standing or respectability to accept the livings, and the

           condition of the Church became scandalous, and gave rise to loud

           complaints. “A Maryland parson” was a by-word for any drunken

           or disreputable wearer of the cloth.

             This miserable and shameful state of things was, however, remedied

           by the growing population of the Province increasing the number of

           taxables in each parish, but especially by the inspection law of 1747,

           which raised the price of tobacco to such an extent that the salaries

           of the clergy became respectable, and even liberal.

             In 1763 the tax was reduced from forty to thirty pounds, and even

           then it was so ample that we are told that the income of the incumbent

           of All Saints Parish in Frederick county was more than 450 pounds

           sterling, and increasing at the rate of fifty pounds a year, and that

           there were but two parishes in the Province in which the clergyman's

           income was less than a hundred pounds sterling.

             This supplementary Act of 1763 was temporary and expired in

           1772, and Gov. Eden, taking the same ground which he took with

           reference to the act fixing officers' fees, announced that as the act of

           1763 had expired, and no other had been enacted in its place, the per

           manent act of 1702 became valid again with its tax of forty pounds.

             Great dissatisfaction followed, and the legality of the Governor's

           position was being fiercely debated, when an acute lawyer (writing

           under an assumed name) published the startling opinion that the Act

           of 1702 had no validity and had never had any. For the Assembly

           which passed that act had been summoned and had met on March 16,

           170 1/2 in the name of King William III., and the laws then passed

           were assented to by the Governor on behalf of his Majesty on the 25th

           of the same month. But King William had died on March 8, and

           Anne was the reigning sovereign when the Assembly met, therefore it

           should have been called and the acts assented to in her name. It was

           even a question whether the Governor's commission had not expired

           with the monarch who issued it—at all events, the Act of 1702 was

           void ab initio.

             This opinion, as was natural, found a large following. Many refused

           to pay their ministers anything, and a plentiful crop of lawsuits sprang