Introduction. xlvii

the Lower House, dated March 20, 1762, Sharpe expressed the hope that the
house would not impute to him the miscarriage of the previous attempts in
the Lower House towards the establishment of an Agent in London. The
Governor declared in a detailed statement of events that he had always tried
to keep the King and his ministers informed of public affairs in the Province,
and of the attempts of the Lower House to secure an Agent, by regularly
transmitting to the Crown the journal of the Lower House where were to
be found the arguments in the messages for and against a Provincial Agent
in London, and other matters in controversy between the two houses (pp 80-81).
On April 6, Edward Tilghman, Robert Lloyd, Hammond, and Ringgold were
ordered to bring in a bill to provide for the support of an agent in London
(p. 104); and on April 17, a bill to raise funds for this purpose by a tax of
two pence upon every hogshead of tobacco exported was introduced and voted
upon. The vote stood forty-two for the bill and two against, Charles Golds-
borough and Dr. George Steuart, obdurate followers of the Proprietary, alone
among the twenty-odd Proprietary members of that body, voting against it
(pp. 30, 135, 136). The bill was then sent to the Upper House, and on the same
day an address by the Lower House, adopted by the close vote of twenty-three
to twenty-two, was sent to the Governor in reply to his message of March 20,
on the subjects of a Provincial Agent and of the Supply bill. The house said
that it would have replied to the Governor before this had it not been so
occupied with the Supply bill, and declared that had the people of Maryland
been properly represented before the King and Ministry by an Agent who
could fairly present their case before them, the Earl of Egremont, now the
King's principal minister, would not have criticized their actions. Did the
Governor feel that any oppressive act which the administration of the Lord
Proprietary might permit could be met by merely sending the journals of the
Lower House for the inspection of the Ministry? The object of having an
Agent was, in the event of a dispute between the Proprietary and the people,
to present the grievances of the latter to the Crown for redress, and not to
be able to do this was to invade the King's dignity and the people's privileges.
If an individual could appeal to the King, certainly a whole body of people
might do so. The Governor as a "delegate of the Proprietary" and "a subordi-
nate instrument", should not be the judge of the expediency of the people
having an Agent to support their interests against the encroachments of him
whom he represented. It was felt that the Governor's reasoning was unhappy
if he inferred that there was no necessity for an Agent because the Assembly
journals were regularly sent to the Ministry, when he himself admits that little
or no attention has been paid to them in London. The Lower House complained
that it had never had the opportunity of putting before the Crown the true
attitude of the people on the Supply bills prepared in the Lower House and
rejected repeatedly in the upper body. The house felt certain that if it could
bring its complaints against the Proprietary government directly before the
King, he would impute obstinacy, not to the members of the Lower House
but to those, who by refusing to pass a bill for the support of an Agent