Introduction. xxvii

bining the assessment plan of taxation on real and personal estates and on
salaries, fees, and incomes from professions, with various other taxes used in
the Province in the past, failed of passage by a vote of 32 to 12. As the details of
its resolves, the votes in the Lower House sitting as a committee of the whole
house, the various provisions of the bill, and the brief but acrimonious messages
between the Lower House and the Governor, are all reviewed at considerable
length elsewhere, further repetition here is unnecessary (pp. xlv-xlvii).

Among other controversial matters which came up at this session in the
Lower House, was that hardy perennial—a bill for the support of a Provincial
Agent in Great Britain to represent the people of Maryland before the home
government. Such a bill was introduced on April 16, 1759, and passed the
next day. It was immediately rejected in the Upper House (pp. 184, 191-192,
157). The subject of a Provincial Agent is further discussed in a later sec-
tion of this introduction (pp. lix-lx). A bill for reducing the allowances of
members of the Upper and Lower houses of the Assembly was introduced
at this session on April 16 (p. 184). This bill had been brought before the
preceding session, but by a vote of 17 to 17, the Speaker casting the deciding
vote, action upon it had been postponed until the next Assembly (pp. 116-117).
This question had been a matter of dispute between the two houses for several
years, and was aimed at the payment for attendance to members of the Upper
House who also received pay as members of the Council, and in many instances
also held other judicial and civil offices. The matter has been discussed at length
in the introduction to the preceding volume of the Archives (Arch. Md. LV,
pp. xlvii-xlviii). The bill as introduced in the Lower House was amended in
several details in committee of the whole as regards the per diem pay of the
members of each house and of county justices, but the Assembly adjourned
before further action could be taken upon it (pp. 188-189). A bill to permit
the issuance of writs of replevin out of the county courts was introduced the
day before adjournment by a committee of the Lower House composed largely
of stalwart members of the popular party. A motion that it be given a second
reading was, doubtless for tactical reasons, defeated by a vote of 22 to 12, all
the votes for this second reading coming from members of the Proprietary
party (p. 184).

A joint committee of both houses was appointed to audit or inspect, the
accounts of the Loan Office (pp. 171, 182, 152), but before it made a report
the session had come to a sudden end. On April 16, the Governor sent a
message to the Lower House saying that he was enclosing an account re-
ceived from Mr. Russell, the Director of the General Hospital maintained by
the British commander, of the sums due him for the care of the Maryland
soldiers, sick and wounded, at that hospital. The Director said that he had
already been paid by Pennsylvania and Virginia for the troops of these prov-
inces cared for last year at the time of the Forbes expedition westward, and
requested payment by Maryland (p. 185); but there is no reason to believe
that he was paid as neither the Journal of Accounts nor the Public Levy came
up for consideration.

The Governor communicated to the Upper House on April 17 that he had
just been instructed by the Lord Proprietary to inform them that, in compli-