Introduction. xliii

to the rights and powers of the British House of Commons was so unbecoming
to a body representing the people of Maryland that no attention would have
been paid to it, "but for the Salutary Motive of Obviating those groundless
pretensions". The Upper House doubted "the Reality of your Concern over
our action in rejecting the bill for raising supplies for His Majesty's Service"
because hopes of agreement between the two houses were thus shattered, as
"there is not the Least Evidence from your Conduct of a Real Concern to
raise Supplies for his Majesty's Service". The objections of the Upper House
to the bill were then discussed. It declared that the principal objections to the
bill were that it was based on taxes derived from a general assessment upon
incomes from real and personal estates and from profits, salaries, and earnings.
The Upper House asked why the lower chamber insisted upon adopting an
untried and intricate system of taxation, when a familiar one to which the
people were accustomed could be used. The assertion of the Lower House
that the plan had been successfully employed elsewhere was untrue. The upper
chamber declared that the system was "totally new .... tho you are pleased
to assert that plans of this sort have not only been thought practicable but
found by long Experience Eligible in our Mother Country and most of the
Neighboring Colonies. We must take the liberty to deny that there is to our
knowledge or belief any such law Subsisting in either One or the other unless
where the Constitution of Government may happen to be such as you would
willingly reduce this to, and even in such a Constitution if such can be found,
no such Bill as yours has Existed and been found by long Experience to be
Eligible, the Invention is Entirely your Own, and however desirous you may
pretend to be that we would only give the people of this Province an Oppor-
tunity of making an Experiment of it we must begg to be Excused". The
Upper House also denied the assertion of the lower chamber that many of its
objections to the first Supply or Assessment bill of 1758 had since been re-
moved, as it still found most of the material objections, especially the consti-
tutional ones, were retained in the present bill. After eight previous rejections
why did the house think that a different fate awaited its ninth attempt ? It had
tried to make the people believe that the bill was really opposed by the Upper
House because it taxed the estate of the Lord Proprietary and the great officers
of the government, and it had sought to mislead the people by referring to
the bill as "an equal assessment" upon all. In saying this the Lower House
had no regard for truth or decency, for it knew that the objection of the Upper
House was not to the principle of the bill taxing the Proprietary, but to its
manner of doing this and the disproportionate quantum of taA.es imposed

upon him; and it also resented as untrue the statement that all its other objec-
tions were merely "thrown in as a barrier" to prevent the imposition of a tax
upon the Proprietary. The Upper House did not understand or recognize as
true the dictum of the Lower House that it was a "maxim in Politicks almost
universally adopted that the Representatives [in the Assembly] are Justifyed
by the Instructions of his Constituents". The Lower House had said that it
did not have time now to look into some of the matters in dispute, but if it
would consult its constituents, the journals of the Assembly, the law books,