The Lower House. 191

the Table which was afterwards read by the Clerk of the House in
the words following (Viz.)

To the Honourable Benedict Leonard Calvert Esq^r Governor of
Maryland.
The Humble Address of the House of Delegates
May it Please your Honour
We his Majestys most Dutifull and Loyall Subjects the Repre-
sentatives of the freemen of Maryland, return your Honour our
humble and hearty thanks for the great regard you are Pleased to
express for the Prosperity and Welfare of the Province; And we
do, with the greatest Sincerity, assure your honour, that we are
firmly resolved faithfully to discharge to the utmost of our Power
our Duty to our most gracious Sovereign to his Lordship the Lord
Proprietary, and the People we represent.
Altho we are really concerned that there should be any Difference
between his Lordship and his Tenants, yet it is the greatest Con-
solation imaginable to us to know that they have given no Occasion
for a Difference; unless a firm Attachment to the Interest and wel-
fare of their Country and a fix'd resolution to hand the same Rights
and Liberties which they derive from their Ancestors, and the
Laws of their Mother Country and this Province Pure and unde-
filed, to their Posterity be such. If these be Causes of Differences

L. H. J.

we hope they will never cease. What the Votes were that alarmed

his Lordship we cannot guess, unless they were the Resolves of the
Lower House of Assembly, wherein the Upper House concurred
relating to the Constitution of the Province; which Resolves we do
Assure your Honour we still firmly adhere to. The Sovereign
Right of the Crown of Great Brittain in and to this Province, as it
is under God, our greatest Security, so we Account it our Chiefest
happiness And we do Affirm that the People we represent and our
selves are so far from a thought injurious to that right that they
and we would spend the last Drop of their & our Blood in the De-
fence of it.
We are at a Loss to Conceive how the laying the Judges under
the Obligation of An Oath to Administer Justice according to the
Laws that ought to be the rule of all their Decisions could give his
Lordship any Apprehensions or oblige his Lordship to dissent to
an Act that has no other Tendency nor can without the greatest
Violence to its sence and the Intention of the Makers of it contained
in Clear and explicit Terms be otherwise Construed but to Oblige
the Magistrates to do their Duty. Nor can the words of that Oath
by any means in our humble Opinion deserve so heavy a Charge, as
an Intent to Effect his Majesties Royall Prerogative in any much
less in Severall of its Branches either in those reserved peculiarly
to his Sovereign Person or in those Delegated to or deposited and

p. 26