xxiv Introduction.

authority to sell houses and lots in that city to pay certain debts, but the peti-
tion seems to have been tabled (pp. 59, 118). A number of other petitions were
received asking relief from the Assembly, but in most cases we are left in
the dark as to why relief is sought. A certain James Johnson sought payment
"by the Public" for goods delivered at Annapolis to the Indians in 1742 (pp.

53. 109).

Eleven acts in all were passed at this session. Five of these continued old

acts which were expiring by limitation of time. Then, as still two centuries
later, the Assembly busied itself with the passage of local laws for the destruc-
tion of crows and squirrels in particular counties, and the exemption of certain
other counties from their operations (pp. 131, 132). An act was passed for the
removal of a public warehouse for the inspection of tobacco from Howard's
Point on South River, Anne Arundel County, to the warehouse owned by
Nicholas Maccubbin "at the Land of Ease" on South River (p. 132). The
act authorizing the change in the location of the Free School in Saint Mary's
County has been previously referred to (pp. xxiii, 132), as has the act
for a grant of money to reimburse Lieutenant-Colonel Dagworthy the sum of
fifty pounds which he had paid for a second-hand Delaware Indian scalp (pp.
xxi-xxii, 134, 135). Reference has also previously been made to bills
passed imposing a special tax for the employment of an organist at Port
Tobacco Church (pp. 135, 136), and for "presents" of money to the officers
and men who had served under Forbes in the expedition against Fort Duquesne
(pp. 136, 137). As noted before, no really important bills, all of which were
of a controversial nature, succeeded in passing both houses at this session.

SESSION OF APRIL, 1759-

The session, or "convention" as the Upper House styled it, of the Assembly
which met in April 1759, did not enact a single law and was even more profit-
less in results than had been its recent predecessors. The Upper and Lower
houses locked horns on the Supply bill, or Assessment bill as it had now gener-
ally come to be known. Thus for the fifth successive time we see the Lower
House sending up a bill calling for a method of taxation for the support of
the.Maryland troops to be used in defense of its western frontier, which it
knew would again be rejected by the Upper House. Nor is it likely that the
Lower House would have favored what was virtually a tax on estates and
incomes had it thought it remotely possible that it would be approved in the
other house. If the Lower House had stubbornly refused to frame a tax bill
for the defense of the frontiers which had a chance of passage when the back
settlements were really seriously threatened, it became more and more im-
probable that it would do so after Forbes had succeeded in taking Fort Du-
quesne and Amherst had captured Louisburg.

The session which began on April 4, 1759, was destined to last only two
weeks. Sharpe in his opening speech to both houses said he had called them
together because the King had directed William Pitt, one of his principal secre-
taries of state, to require the governors of the several provinces to convene
their respective assemblies, and to urge them to raise as large a number of men