xxvi Introduction.

between the people and the Proprietary as represented respectively by these
two houses, which helped to prepare the minds of the former for revolution.
But fortunately there have been preserved copies of three of these rejected
Supply bills, and these together with the journals of the two houses and the
correspondence of Governor Sharpe relating to them, bring out clearly the
matters in controversy. In the case of the majority of other bills rejected at the
1762 and 1763 sessions, however, no copies have been preserved, and the
journals of the two houses throw little or no direct light upon their contents.
As most of them arose in the Lower House, and after passage there were
promptly rejected by the upper chamber, it is safe to assume that nearly all
were looked upon by the latter body as encroachments upon the Proprietary's
prerogative. In a few instances, where before final rejection they were returned
by the Upper House with amendments which the Lower House refused to
assent to, the journals of the houses thus reveal what was the cause of their
rejection. Some of these bills were recognized to be meritorius as far as their
general purposes were concerned, and would have been promptly passed by
both houses had not the question of the prerogative entered. The disposition
of license fees and fines was often the point at issue, the Lower House bills
providing that these should be used for some specified public purpose or for
the general support of the Provincial government, while the Upper House
claimed them for the personal use of the Proprietary. Bills that seem to have
failed, or upon which action had been deferred, for this, and possibly other
reasons, were: (i) An act to ease the Land Tax (pp. 154, 38); (2) an act for
the advancement of justice (pp. 104, 138, 143); (3) an act to make it penal to
forge or counterfeit Bills of Credit of Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, East
or West Jerseys, or the three lower counties of Delaware, called Newcastle,
Kent, and Sussex (pp. 107, 126); (4) an act for the preservation of the breed
of fish in the river Susquehanna (pp. 107, 145, 155, 32).

The rejection of another group of bills originating in the Lower House and
turned down in the Upper seems to have been in part due to the fact that they
would have extended the jurisdiction of the county courts at the expense of
the provincial courts in Annapolis, a decentralization of judicial power which
the Proprietary government opposed, as its influence was better assured in the
courts at Annapolis, the seat of government. Such bills were probably: (i) An
act for the advancement of justice (pp. 104, 138, 143); (2) an act for the
trial of all matters of fact in the several counties (pp. 105, 137, 149); and
(3) an act for issuing writs of replevin out of the county courts (pp. 135,
33, 34). Copies of these bills have not been preserved. In a quite different
group, however, was the proposal to defer payment of allowances to the mem-
bers of the Upper and Lower Houses of the Assembly (p. 392), which from
its title suggests self-abnegation on the part of the Lower House, but was
one really directed at the members of the Upper House, who also received pay
as members of the Council and as holders of various other public offices. This
had for years been a matter of controversy between the two houses and need
not be again discussed here (Arch. Md. LVI; xxlii).