Letter of Transmittal. ix

1885, while repairs were being made to the old Council Chamber, or Treasury
Building near the State House, in cutting through a new window the Iron
Chest was found walled up between the original outside wall of the building
and a more recently constructed inner wall. In it was found a book of accounts
and the woodcut block from which the provincial paper money was printed.
A few years ago the chest was turned over to the Maryland Historical
Society, together with the beautifully bound contemporary manuscript volume
of accounts, covering the period from 1734 to 1767, entitled " Iron Chest
Account Book No. I," which apparently contains a complete record of the
uses to which the chest was put during this period and the amount of money
deposited and withdrawn from it.

A word as to the sources from which the proceedings of the two houses of
the Assembly and the laws enacted by them, as they appear in this volume,
are taken. The State possesses not only the contemporary official manuscript
record of the proceedings of both houses beautifully inscribed in well-bound
parchment covered folio libers, but also the original rough notes kept day by
day by the clerks of each house. The contemporary official copies of all the acts
passed at the various sessions of the Assembly are recorded in another series
of libers, and in the Court of Appeals numbers of the original acts themselves
are to be found. In addition to these manuscript sources there are also the
contemporary printed session laws, or " Acts of Assembly of the Province of
Maryland," and the proceedings of the Lower House, printed under the title
'' Votes and Proceedings of the Lower House of Assembly " for each session,
both from the press of Jonas Green of Annapolis. The Upper House, less
sensitive to public opinion and more directly under the sway of the Proprietary,
did not feel the necessity of thus laying its actions and votes before the public
in print. A full account of these printed " Session Laws " and " Votes and
Proceedings " will be found in A History of Printing in Colonial Maryland by
Lawrence C. Wroth. While the inscribed manuscript libers are to be considered
as the official records, a number of errors which occur in them, especially as
regards proper names, have been detected by a careful check-up of them with
the printed versions and the rough notes of the clerks.

Dr. J. Hall Pleasants, who succeeded the late Dr. Bernard C. Steiner as a
member of the Committee on Publications, has also become his successor in
the editorship of the Archives. In preparing this volume for the press the
editor is under great obligations to Mr. Charles Fickus of the Maryland
Historical Society's staff and to Mrs. Fickus for their invaluable aid in
correcting the proof and in making the index. That part of the copy which
was not directly the work of the photostat was made from the original man-