xii Letter of Transmittal.

passage of the important Tobacco Law, on the ground that such proclamations
were unnecessary.

Early in the session the Lower House was called upon to decide an election
dispute between two rival claimants for one of the seats representing the City
of Annapolis, made vacant by the death of Captain George Gordon. Dr. George
Steuart, a close friend of the Calvert family, had been certified as elected by
the aldermen of the city, and his seat was contested by Dr. Alexander Hamilton,
the witty Scotchman, chronicler of the Tuesday Club, author of the Itinerarium,
and son-in-law of Daniel Dulany, the elder, who had been certified by the
mayor as elected. The contestants, both rival Scotch physicians, were ordered
to summon their witnesses before the bar of the house to testify as to certain
disputed votes. After hearing these the house seated Dr. Alexander Hamilton.
It is of interest that the expenses incurred in calling the thirty witnesses,
amounting to seven pounds, ten shillings, were ordered paid by the two con-
testants respectively to the officers of the house.

The old disputed question as to the force of the English statutes in the
colonies, cropped up again in this session. The Lower House, ever insistant that
all English laws were in force in the Province, unless acts directly at variance
to them had been passed by the Assembly, formally resolved on October 18th,
that in order to assure the purity of the election of its members and to prevent
bribery and corruption, all English laws, and especially the Statute of George II,
Chapter 24, requiring every elector or voter to take the oaths, should be rigor-
ously enforced. The suspicion is aroused that this was now brought forward to
insure the exclusion of suspected Roman Catholic voters. An election bill which
could hardly have had the same purpose, however, was soon afterwards intro-
duced to limit to freeholders the right to vote for members of the Lower House,
but this failed of passage.

The Roman Catholic question as usual flared up at this session in the Lower
House, and again the Upper House took no part in it. The matter came before
the Lower House in the form of a report from its Committee on Grievances
and Courts of Justice, October 29, 1753. This report repeated the charges
that the growth of Popery in the Province had become notorious through the
public preaching of priests and their perversion of many Protestant subjects; that
Catholic and Protestant children were taught openly in Catholic schools; that
children were sent abroad to the Catholic seminary at St. Omer's to be edu-
cated; and that the Jesuits endeavored to pervert the servants and slaves of
Protestants, thus increasing the danger to the Protestant inhabitants in case
of insurrection. With this report were filed various statements and affidavits
from sundry persons including five prominent clergymen of the Established
Church: Thomas Chase, Hugh Deans, Thomas Cradock, James Magill, and