Introduction. ixxiii

both houses praying relief was read in the Upper House, and referred by that
chamber to the Lower House (p. 20, 107). While unfortunately very few of
the petitions of this period to the Assembly have been preserved, luckily Green
put his into print, and one copy of this in the form of a broadside has been
preserved, and is to be found among the Calvert papers (No. 672) in the
Maryland Historical Society. It will be found reprinted in the Appendix of
this volume (pp. 578-579). This petition declared that he had served as public
printer for twenty-four years having been induced to come to Maryland by
promises of public encouragement and continued employment, but that the
unhappy divisions between the several branches of the legislature had dis-
appointed his reasonable expectations; that the cutting off of £5 of his salary
from each county [totalling f70] in the years when there was no Assembly, and
this without reward for extra work and paper for extra sessions which have
occurred year after year, together with no allowance whatever for the last year,
were difficulties too heavy for him to continue to labor under. In closing he
referred to a printed letter already submitted to the Governor and Assembly
in which he had set forth many particulars with strict truth too prolix to repeat
in this petition, and craved compassionate consideration and relief agreeable
to his deserts. It may be added that no copy of this printed letter is known
to be now in existence.

After the petition of Green reached the Lower House, a committee of six,
of which Walter Dulany was chairman, was ordered to make enquiry as to
the facts set forth in it (p. 115). This committee on April 13 brought in an
exhaustive report on Green's activities as public printer from the year 1738
to 1762. The report shows that in 1738 and 1739 he received a salary or
allowance of £180 yearly, although payments to him at that early period were
often long delayed. The allowance to him a few years later was based upon a
law imposing a tax of £15 on each of the fourteen counties, and payable by
them to the printer. In 1748 this tax was raised to £20. Under subsequent
acts payments at first were provided for in the Journal of Accounts, and later
by special acts of the Assembly. If no session were held in any year, he was
in that year to receive only £15 instead of £20 from each county. An act
passed at the February, 1756, session no longer provided that a fixed equal
amount be paid by each county, but the levy for this purpose in the several
counties was to be based upon the number of taxables in each. In 1759, a
year when there was no session, the total amount that was paid to him was £210.
In many years there were two or more sessions, with resulting voluminous
laws and journals in such periods, but in these years he received the same
allowance as he would have received if there had been only one session. The
committee reported that beginning with the May, 1747, session, there had been,
including the so-called "conventions" of the Assembly when no laws were
passed, twenty-eight meetings in fifteen years, or an average of nearly two
sessions a year. Nor had any payments whatever been made to Green for
the public printing in the year 1760. It is not therefore surprising that Green
was in dire straits and appears as the largest debtor to the Loan Office, to the
amount of £191 .'6:4, principal and interest, in the year 1762 (p. 54).