xiv Letter of Transmittal.

the proposed expedition to the western frontier than was almost any other
colony.

At this session no legislation of importance was enacted. Two acts of a mili-
tary character were passed. One, which had been asked for by Shirley,
fixed the rates of hire for conveyances for transporting military stores and the
rates to be charged by inns or ordinaries for quartering officers and privates;
and the other sought to prevent the exportation of warlike stores and provisions
which might reach the French or the hostile Indians. An act was also passed
to expedite the collection by the Currency Office of interest due to the Province
on bonds secured by mortgages on lands. Of the other four laws passed two were
private acts to correct errors in deeds to land; the other two were of little or no
interest. It was at this session that the Lower House by a unanimous vote
registered its disapproval of the plan of a colonial union proposed at the Albany
Conference, which has already been noted.

The Governor in a message to both houses March 4, 1755, called their atten-
tion to the dissent of the Lord Proprietary to two acts passed at the October
1753 session. These were: (1) an act relating to the examination of witnesses
beyond seas and for the easy foreclosure of mortgages, and (2) an act relating
to the title of lands held by Richard Bennett of Queen Anne's County. The Gov-
ernor also stated that the Proprietary would have dissented to a third act,
familiarly known as the Tobacco Inspection Act, for regulating the marketing of
tobacco, for preventing frauds in His Majesty's customs, and for the limitation
of officers' fees, had he not been persuaded that the Assembly would promptly
repeal the obnoxious clauses regulating certain officers' fees and the rates at
which foreign and English coins might circulate in the Province. The Governor
also informed the Lower House that the Proprietary had presented to the Lords
of Trade and Plantations the petition of the Lower House asking them to
permit the importation of salt from any port of Europe to be used for curing
fish. As these dissents and the petition in regard to the importation of salt have
been fully discussed in Volume L of the Archives, little need be said about them
here. It should be noted, however, that the Lower House did not take seriously
the Proprietary's threat that he would dissent to the Tobacco Inspection Act,
were not the obnoxious clauses repealed, as it was felt that he would not dare,
by such a step, to throw into chaos all commercial activities of the Province, and
thus imperil his own income. A resolution to repeal was therefore rejected by
a vote of 35 to 5, the Lower House declaring that it saw nothing objectionable
in the act which would warrant such action.

The Lower House summoned John Rawlings, one of the justices of the
Frederick County Court, before the bar of the House, charged by a member
of the Assembly from Frederick with certain high-handed acts in the adminis-