Introduction. ixv

revenues; (4) that a bill of this kind is necessary to quiet the minds of land-
holding aliens and to assure the safety of their titles to those who in good faith
have paid their caution money, the costs for their land warrant, the surveyor's
fee for their warrant, the examiner's fee for their certificate, the land office for
their patent, the chancellor for his seal, and the quit rents to the Proprietary;
and then after all these payments, through ignorance of the law, they may at
any time be intimidated by the issuance of an escheat warrant, which without
this legislation, may result in the loss of their lands; (5) that, if the principle
upon which this bill is based be rejected, it may well become the rule of this
house in comparable cases to refuse to pass "any Bill securitative of the rights of
the People" as against the Lord Proprietary, a course that would be pregnant
of irreconcilable enmity between him and his tenants, and result in jealousies,
suspicions, dissensions, and animosities that would prove detrimental to his
Lordship's revenue and discourage further settlement, depopulate the country,
and cast an odious blemish upon the character of his government; (6) that
similar bills had been passed in New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, and
the lack of such laws here will place this Province at a disadvantage and de-
prive it of the advantages enjoyed by settlers in those colonies, for under the
act of Parliament for naturalizing foreign Protestants (under which Maryland
then operated) the long term of residence required in the plantations before
naturalization, prevents them from promptly acquiring land legally in this
Province and earning their living upon it, for with the exception of a few who
may become merchants, the only way they can gain a livelihood here is on
the land; (7) that the failure to pass the bill may result in greedy men seeking
by escheat warrants to dispossess aliens of their lands before they have lived
here the time required for naturalization under the act of Parliament, and
subject them to a multiplicity of law suits; (8) that unless this bill is passed
any attempt to bring alien settlers here will only be regarded as an engine or
snare to catch and ruin the unwary; (9) that the suggestion that there may
be clauses in the bill artfully inserted which may tend to invalidate his Lord-
ship's general rights in the matter of escheat is chimerical, for if there are
such they should now be pointed out and corrected, and the fear of them not
given as a reason for its rejection. Dulany concluded by saying that the bill
is concise and plain, and the subject matter so simple that the dread of any
design on the part of its framers in the Lower House is rather the effect of
excessive diffidence than prudent caution (pp. 56-59).

As illustrating the dilemma in which the heirs of an alien landholder did
sometimes find themselves under existing conditions, and the injustice to which
they were subjected, there is printed in the Appendix (pp. 517-519), the
petition, dated April 20, 1757, of Daniel Chamier, the executor of the estate
of Valentius Duchart, of Baltimore County, addressed to the Governor and
Assembly of Maryland. It would appear from this petition that Duchart, a
native of France and a Protestant, had purchased a tract of land in Baltimore
County and leased an inn from Dr. William Lyon of Baltimore Town, and
that Duchart had been killed when his barn was destroyed in a "hard Gale of
Wind", before naturalization, for which he had applied, had been granted. The