1 Introduction.

was also sent to Frederick, the Lord Proprietary, requesting him to lay these
petitions before the King and the Lords of Trade and Plantations (pp. 182,
184-185, 186-190, 322-323, 350, 360-361). Under date of November 27,
1758, Frederick, the Lord Proprietary, wrote to Sharpe asking him to trans-
mit to the Assembly his reply to their address requesting him to present their
joint petition to the King, and also to place before the Assembly the report of
the committee of the Privy Council refusing to advise the Crown to lift the
blockade (pp. 754-755).

In a letter from Gen. James Abercrombie to Governor Sharpe, dated New
York, March 15, 1758, notifying the Governor of his appointment by the
King to succeed Loudoun as commander-in-chief of the forces in America,
Sharpe was told that it was now necessary to lay an immediate embargo upon
all ships in the several provinces in North America, and he is ordered to make
proclamation of it in Maryland (pp. 470-471).

PROVINCIAL AGENT IN GREAT BRITAIN

The appointment of a Provincial Agent in Great Britain to represent the
people, or rather the Lower House, came up at the March-May 1758 session.
Early in the century on several occasions Maryland had been represented in
London by a Provincial Agent who had presented the side of the Lower House
on disputed questions to the Crown or to the Lord Proprietary, as the case
might be. For more than a decade, however, Maryland had had no agent in
London, partly because the services of the agent in the past had entailed con-
siderable expense and had proved of comparatively little value, and partly
because of the opposition of the Proprietary to the presence of such an official
in England, who he feared, would " misrepresent" him before the home
government.

The Lower House voted on April 18, 1758, by a vote of 25 to 14, to raise
a sufficient sum to pay such an agent (p. 593), and on May 6, it voted 33 to 5
to raise the sum required for the purpose by a tax of two pence on every hun-
dred pounds of tobacco exported from the province, but at the same time
voted 30 to 7 against the imposition of an export duty on iron for this pur-
pose (pp. 663-664). The bill imposing an export tax on tobacco to pay an agent
promptly passed the Lower House and was as promptly rejected in the Upper
House (p. 665).

In a recent number of the Maryland Historical Magazine will be found a
contemporary (1758) opinion from the Proprietary standpoint, possibly written
by Sharpe himself, in regard to the proposed appointment of an agent to rep-
resent the Lower House in England (1938, vol. xxxiii, pp. 233, 243). Much
will be heard later on this question of the Lower House being represented by
an agent in London. In 1766 this house, without an appropriation and over the
opposition of the Proprietary, did establish such an agency, paying the costs
by popular subscriptions and a lottery. The subject of a Provincial Agent in
Great Britain is comprehensively treated by Newton D. Mereness in his
Maryland ax a Proprietary Province, 1901, (pp. 464-474).