viii Letter of Transmittal.

ernor, Horatio Sharpe, and his Council, sitting as the Upper House of the
Assembly. The laws against Catholics which were in force before this period
and which remained with slight changes until the Revolution, were to have far-
reaching effect, for as men's minds later became directed to more pressing
matters, and interest in religious dissension receded into the background, the
Catholics, who remained disqualified from holding any public office, were found
almost to a man on the Revolutionary side. Charles Carroll of Carrollton is said
to have declared that his political disabilities were an important factor in de-
termining his attitude in the struggle.

To have an intelligent conception of the struggles between the Lower House
and the government of the Lord Proprietary as represented by his Governor
and Council sitting as the Upper House, the student must ever remember that
at this time three subjects filled the minds of all: the fear of French and Indian
invasion, the means by which taxes should be raised to prosecute the war, and
the Roman Catholic question.

The prosecution of the war was the subject of endless discussion and dispute
in the Assembly. The colonies felt that the threat to British authority in North
America by the French was one which should be met in great part by the
armies of Great Britain, with such voluntary help as each colony was dis-
posed to give when its own territory was threatened. There was no widespread
conception of a community of interest between the colonies as a whole. The
idea of a confederacy or union such as had been formulated in 1754, the year
before our period begins, at the Albany Conference under the crafty hand of
Benjamin Franklin, was specifically repudiated in Maryland by a resolution of
the Lower House passed at the February-March session. In an address to the
Governor under date of March 10, 1755, the Lower House declared that " we
cannot, consistent with our Duty to our Constituents, forbear to observe in
general, that the carrying the said Plan into Execution would absolutely subvert
that happy Form of Government which we have a Right to by our Charter,
(the Freedom of which was doubtless one great Inducement to our Ancestors
to leave their Friends and native Country, and venture their Lives and Fortunes
among a Fierce and Savage People, in a rough, uncultivated World), and
destroy the Rights, Liberties, and Properties of his Majesty's loyal Subjects
of this Province" (pages 71-2).

The Lower House was perfectly willing to allow enlistment of Marylanders
in the royal regiments for the general defence in the service of the King, if the
King were willing to pay and maintain them, but it was unwilling to recruit and
support a militia force except for defensive purposes, and this only on the basis
of short enlistments.