Introduction. ixiii

latter, at a different rate of exchange than that specified by existing Provincial
laws for the payment of other public charges and taxes in specie (p. 355).

A bill under the title "An act for Easing the Inhabitants of this Province
from the great and unequal Burthen of the additional Land-Tax" was intro-
duced in the Lower House at the September-October 1760 session. The amount
of the deficiency which would have to be taken care of under the Act of 1756 was
now estimated to be £13,648—4—7, which, it was reported, could be met
by an additional land tax of seven shillings, seven pence, for every hundred
acres, together with a double land tax imposed on papists of eighteen years
and over (pp. 336-339). A bill based on these estimates was brought in and
passed by the Lower House on September 29 and sent to the Upper House
(p. 357). Here it was amended to read that the representatives of the Upper
House, who were to serve as commissioners under the act, were to be nominated
in the bill by the Upper House, and that the operations of the law under which
it was proposed to meet the deficit by sundry taxes and duties (and not by the
land tax) be limited to one, instead of three years, as was provided in the Lower
House bill. The Upper House also refused to consent to a provision of the bill
that the payments of taxes in gold or silver might be made at a different ratio
than that determined by law for the payment in paper money of officers' fees
and the public debt, as tending, said the Upper House, to depreciate the value of
the paper currency of the Province (p. 375). The bill was returned to the
Lower House as amended, where by a vote of 17 to 15 that house agreed to the
nomination by each house of its own commissioners, the irreconcilables of the
popular party, however, voting in the negative. As to the duration of the period
for the continuance of the act, a motion to compromise these differences by
extending the operations of the law for two years, resulted in a tie vote of 16
to 16, the Speaker casting the deciding vote for this compromise (p. 361). On
October 4 the Lower House sent a message to the upper chamber agreeing to
the method of naming the commissioners and limiting their number, and agree-
ing to the compromise of a two year extension period. It refused, however, in

this message to assent to the amendment of the Upper IIuusc applying the

present legal ratio of the value of gold and silver to the paper currency to the
payment of the additional land tax. But the Upper House in a second message
stood firm in its opposition to depreciating the paper currency (pp. 374-375),
and the lower chamber, very anxious for the passage of a law to prevent the
imposition of an additional land tax on their own lands, finally yielded on the
currency ratio, the bill passed both houses, and received the assent of the Gov-
ernor (pp. 386-390).

THE NATURALIZATION BILL AND ALIEN LANDHOLDERS.

An effort was made at the November-December I758 session to do away
with certain injustices under which unnaturalized alien landholders in Maryland
suffered, especially the Germans of western Maryland. Under existing law
only naturalized inhabitants might hold, sell, or inherit land. The Proprietary
government was more than lukewarm to the proposal to validate by a blanket
act all such titles, because land held under defective title reverted by escheat