Introduction. ixvii

LICENSES FROM ORDINARIES

The dispute as to whether license fees from ordinaries or public houses,
belonged to the public or to the Lord Proprietary, was one which extended
back to the year 1692—nearly three quarters of a century. Since the restora-
tion of the Province to the Calverts in 1715, the Proprietary had claimed
these licenses as his own under his prerogative, and the Lower House had
claimed them as belonging to the public. At the time of the Third Inter-colonial
war, and again during the Fourth Inter-colonial or Seven Years' War, the
Proprietary had been reluctantly forced by public opinion to "acquiesce" in
their being pledged under several acts of the Assembly to restore the sinking
funds of loans, set up under various Supply acts for His Majesty's Service,
although he reasserted in each instance his assumed rights to the licenses.
These were the £5,000 Supply act of 1740 for the Carthagena Expedition,
the two Supply acts of 1746 for the Canada Expedition, the £6,000 Supply
act of 1754, and the £40,000 Supply act of 1756. And again in 1760, the
sinking fund provisions of some of these acts were continued by the Assembly
for three years longer, the ordinary licenses collected under them to be used
to lighten certain onerous taxes on landowners. The discussions and contro-
versies which these acts evoked, in as far as they related to the use of ordinary
licenses, have been discussed in the introductions to former volumes of the
Archives (LII, ix-x; LIV, liii; LVI, ixvii-lxviii).

When the 1761 session of the Assembly met, it was obvious that the fees
from ordinary licenses would more than meet the requirements of the sinking
funds under the various Supply acts, and the Lower House at once made a
determined effort to have this license money again dedicated to the use of the
public. A "proposal" was favorably considered in the Lower House, under
which the license money was to be used towards the support of a college at
Annapolis, but the Assembly adjourned before definite action could be taken
upon it (Arch. Md. LVI; ixvii-lxviii).

At the 1762 session, the disposition of ordinary licenses came before the
Assembly in two ways. The Lower House first passed a bill regulating ordi-
naries and ordinary licenses. This bill embodied an effort to continue the
provisions relating to these licenses contained in the acts of 1757, in so far
as the latter act supplemented the provisions of the Service act of 1746. When
the bill reached the Upper House nu iiuiicc was taken of it and it was allowed
to die (pp. 35-36, 151). The disposition of these licenses then promptly came
up in another guise in the Lower House. The Upper House had just rejected
the Supply, or Assessment bill, for His Majesty's Service which made pro-
vision for maintaining a force of three hundred Provincial militia and for
providing eighty-four recruits for the regular British regiments, the funds for
this purpose to be raised by taxes on incomes and on the assessed value of
personal property and land including the landholdings of the Proprietary.
Immediately after the Supply Bill had been rejected in the Upper House the
question was brought up in the Lower House as to whether a bill should be
introduced to continue the imposition of the license fees on ordinaries provided
for under the £40,000 Supply Act of 1756, now about to expire, and to use