Introduction. xxiii

solving this Assembly and calling a new one. The Council, by a vote of
four to three recommended that he should so do, and writs of election for
members of a new Lower House were issued (Arch. Md. xxxi, 294-295).
That the Proprietary interest was to be sadly disappointed in its hope of a more
pliant lower chamber, and that the new house which met on October 23, 1758,
was to be largely composed of the same anti-Proprietary group, with the same
truculent leaders who had controlled recent sessions, will be told in the next vol-
ume of these Archives.

THE SUPPLY BILLS

The story of the fate of the various " Supply bills for His Majesty's Ser-
vice " that were considered during the four sessions of the Assembly which
this volume covers, seems worth narrating in some detail. It was these Supply
bills, whether they passed or failed, which took up most of the time of the
Assembly and resulted, not only in increasing the hostility between the popu-
lar and Proprietary parties of the Province, but brought to the fore various
constitutional and taxation questions that played a large part in developing
the attitude of mind on the part of the people that led to the Revolution.

After a bitter struggle between the two houses, the April-May 1757 session
saw the enactment of what was to be the last Supply bill for His Majesty's
service that was to be passed during the Seven Years' War. As has already
been fully narrated (pp. xiii-xiv), when the Assembly met on April 8, Gov-
ernor Sharpe called its attention to the necessity of making immediate provi-
sion to defend the Province and to meet the Earl of Loudoun's call for a
quota of at least five hundred men from Maryland (pp. 3-5). After declar-
ing its wish to cooperate in every way in meeting all reasonable demands, the
Lower House asked for detailed information as to the number of men now in ser-
vice and their terms of enlistment (pp. 46, 49). From the exchange of messages
between the Governor and the house it soon became evident that the use of
Maryland militia for garrisoning Fort Cumberland on the Potomac at Will's
Creek, was to be one of the chief subjects of contention between the two
Houses. Located some seventy-five miles west of Fort Frederick by road, and
therefore well within Maryland territory, Fort Cumberland was felt by the
Lower House to be far beyond the actual frontier settlements, and therefore,
because of its greater importance to the general plan of the British campaign,
to be more the concern of the British commander-in-chief than of the Province
of Maryland. The house declared that it should be manned by regular Brit-
ish troops and not by Maryland soldiers. With this view neither Sharpe nor
Loudoun had the least patience, as they knew that, if garrisoned by Maryland
soldiers, British regulars would be thus relieved for active military duty in
other fields. Of course no defence can be made of this narrow, parochial
view of the Lower House, nor of the restrictions which it sought to place in
the Supply bill forbidding the employment of the Maryland troops beyond
the settled frontier. There was also in the background the great difference of
opinion between the two houses as to the sources of taxation from which the
money necessary to maintain these five hundred Provincial troops was to be