xlviii Introduction.

precluded the people from bringing their contests with the Proprietary to the
proper tribunal for decision (pp. 138, 143).

In a letter from Sharpe to Cecilius Calvert, dated May 11, 1762, the Governor
wrote that Benjamin Franklin had been unable to get the Office of the Secretary
of State to receive the address of condolence to the King for presentation to
him, because it contained a paragraph which the Office felt was not pertinent
to such an address, calling the King's attention to the grievances of the people
which an Agent could bring to his attention (Arch. Md. XIV; 52). The
agitation to provide support for an agent in Great Britain was to crop up again
at the next and subsequent sessions.

The matter of a London Agent did come up again at the October-November,
1763, session, when a bill was drawn up in the Lower House proposing a four
pence export duty on every hogshead of tobacco for the support of a Provincial
Agent in London. It passed the house on October 18 by a vote of thirty-six
to one, Dr. George Steuart of Annapolis, the irreconcilable member of the
Proprietary party alone voting against it. The vote indicates that it was such
a popular measure that no other member of the Assembly dared to vote against
it. The Upper House, as was to be expected, promptly rejected the bill and
returned it to the Lower House without any explanation of its action for so
doing (pp. 319, 320, 322.323, 373, 374).

ADDRESS OF THE LOWER HOUSE TO THE KING

It will be recalled that at the April-May, 1761, session there had been an
acrimonious controversy between the Lower House, on the one hand, and
the Upper House and Governor, on the other, as to the form of a joint address
to George 111, who had recently ascended the throne, offering their
condolences to the King upon the death of his grandfather, George II, and
congratulating him upon his accession to the throne. Because the Lower House
had incorporated in the address a prayer to the King begging that he further
the desire of the people of Maryland to be represented before him by a Pro-
vincial Agent, a boon, it said, which the Upper House had prevented their
obtaining, the Upper House had refused to concur in this message on the
grounds that the agitation for a Provincial Agent was not only entirely foreign
to such an address, but was merely brought in as a means of casting "an
injurious blemish upon His Lordship's Government". The Lower House had
then adopted an address of condolence of its own, and had requested Sharpe to
affix the Great Seal to it. As the Speaker of the Lower House had refused to
sign the address, and the Governor to affix the Great Seal, it must have been
dispatched to London without official credentials (Arch. Md. LVI; ix, ixii).

A letter from Sharpe to Cecilius Calvert, the Proprietary' Secretary in
London, dated April n, 1762, throws interesting light upon the subsequent
fate of this address. Sharpe says that Thomas Ringgold, a member of the
Lower House, received a letter from Benjamin Franklin, while the 1762
Assembly was in session, "advising him that the Address of Condolence etc.
which was transmitted to him last Summer to be presented to His Majesty