ixviii Introduction.

the money to repay a loan of £10,52015:3 which it was proposed to make for
the support of the three hundred Provincial militia and the eight-four recruits
for the regular forces. A motion to introduce a bill along these lines was
voted down by the popular party, by a vote of 24 to 22, all the Proprietary
members present voting in the affirmative (pp. 146-147). No further attempt
was made at this session by the Lower House to appropriate these ordinary
license fees for public purposes.

At the October-November, 1763, session the use of ordinary licenses was
again brought up. The bill for the support of a college at Annapolis, which
was brought forward at the 1763 session, appropriating these licenses towards
maintaining the college, was passed on October 28, 1763, by the Lower House
by the close vote of 21 to 19, a few members of the Proprietary Party, among
others Walter Dulany, voting for it, and it was sent to the Upper House
(pp. 344-345). It was estimated by the committee which drew up the bill
that the ordinary licenses would produce about £600 annually. In the Upper
House no action whatever was taken upon it, this house alleging after it had
had possession of the bill for some three weeks, that it did not have time at
this session to properly consider such an important question, but not intimating
that the real reason for its opposition to the bill was because of the inclusion
of the license fees for the support of the college. Numerous acrimonious
messages then passed between the two houses, the Lower House declaring
that the upper chamber did not have the courage to tell the people the true
reason for its opposition. The Lower House then made an effort to have the
bill published together with the messages which had passed between the two
houses, and when the Upper House refused to return the original bill, the
Lower House indignantly proclaimed that the upper chamber feared the effect
upon the public which its publication would produce (pp. 388-389, 402.404).

As soon as the Lower House saw that the upper chamber was unwilling
to take any action upon the college bill it sought to put the latter body in an
even worse position with the public in regard to the use of ordinary licenses
by passing a bill for the defense of the frontiers against the renewed Indian
depredations, which appropriated this license money to defray the expenses
of the defense, in the hope that public opinion might force the Upper House
to accept it (p. 396). This bill provided for the raising of a company of
rangers to defend the outlying settlements. The Upper House rejected the
bill, declaring in a message to the Lower House that while approving the pur-
poses of the bill, it felt that the money should first be taken from various un-
appropriated balances in the Loan Office, and only in the event that these
balances were not sufficient, should ordinary licenses be called upon to supply
the deficiency, and that it would approve a bill drawn up along these lines
(pp. 277-278). In the Lower House Edmund Key, an active supporter of
the Proprietary Party, offered a motion for thus raising the money required,
but it was voted down 28 to 4 (p. 410). The Lower House in a message to
the supper chamber indignantly rejected the suggestion of the Upper House,
declaring that it was made in bad faith, as that body knew that the balances
in the Loan Office were more than sufficient to pay all the expenses of the