1 Introduction.

enacted at recent sessions, by passing, now for the eighth time, a Supply or
Assessment bill for His Majesty's Service in order that it might be rejected by
the Upper House, although the Governor and the two houses had long since
ceased to exchange acrimonious addresses and messages justifying the respec-
tive position of each on the subject. The necessity for raising a force of men
in the Province to cooperate with the British troops had been brought before the
Assembly by the Governor in his opening address and in the recent letters from
Pitt and Amherst to him. On April 16 the Lower House voted, 24 to 20,
against a motion that the number of men to be levied be fixed at two hundred,
and, then by a vote of 23 to 20 raised the number to four hundred (pp. 445-446).
The same resolves were adopted as to what the Supply bill should provide for
as had been passed at preceding sessions, and which have already been fully
discussed. It was then once more decided by a vote of 24 to 20 that the money
for this purpose be raised by an assessment on all estates, real and personal,
and an income tax upon lucrative offices and employments. This majority of
only four for raising the money by the assessment plan shows a falling off
in the number of middle of the road members of the popular party who were
willing to favor indefinitely this method of taxation (pp. 447-448). Comment-
ing on the small majority by which the assessment bill had been carried, Sharpe,
in a letter to Secretary Cecilius Calvert, April 19, 1761, declared that if patron-
age were used wisely in the Lower House to continue the interest of moderate
men towards the government, rather than to purchase unruly members of the
opposition by shrievalties and other offices, as Calvert had suggested, a moderate
majority might soon be obtained for some other method of taxation (Arch.
Md. IX, 502-503, 507). A committee appointed by the Lower House reported
with detailed estimates that at least £32,665 would be required (pp. 448-449).
Another committee of which Edward Tilghman was chairman was then in-
structed to prepare a Supply bill for raising £40,000 and such a bill was intro-
duced and passed on April 25 by a vote of 23 to 13, the Proprietary party of
course voting against it (pp. 461, 463). In the Upper House it was rejected
for the eighth time, and returned without comment to the Lower House
(p. 420). An attempt was then made in the Lower House to raise one hundred
men to garrison Fort Cumberland and Red Stone Creek and its crossings, ap-
parently brought forward by Henry Wright Crabb and Colonel Thomas Cresap
of Frederick County, but was voted down 31 to 4 (p. 479). As far as is known
no copy of the Supply or Assessment bill introduced at this session is in exis-
tence, but it is certain that it differed in no important way from its predecessors,
which had been previously rejected seven times in the Upper House. A letter
from Sharpe to Secretary Cecilius Calvert, dated May 10, 1761, indicates that
it may have contained an appropriation of three or four hundred pounds for
the support of a provincial agent in Great Britain (Arch. Md. IX, 519). An
unsuccessful attempt was to be made again in the new Assembly when it first
met on March 17, 1762, to pass a Supply bill of the same tenor as the eight
which had already failed of passage in the Upper House.