Introduction. ixxv

the session laws and the Votes and Proceedings of the Lower House, specified
respectively as three months and four months. By a supplementary act passed
on November 26, 1763, which applied, however, only to this session, these
periods were extended to four months and five months respectively (pp. 396,
278, 518-519). The Lower House at the 1763 session also directed Green
to print in the Maryland Gazette the act to recover small debts out of court
before one justice, and also certain sections of the Tobacco Inspection act
relating te tobacco warehouses (p. 389). The attempt of the Lower House
to have printed the bill rejected by the Upper House to establish a College at
Annapolis was frustrated by the refusal of the latter chamber to return to it
the original bill (pp. Ivii-lviii, 389). The Journal of the Lower House also dis-
closes that in addition to doing the public printing Green sold record books to the
House, for the purchase of which an ordinance was passed (pp. 387, 388).

LANGUISHING PRISONERS FOR DEBT

It had long been customary, at more or less frequent but irregular intervals,
for the Assembly to pass acts for the relief of sundry prisoners confined for
debt in county jails, who were always described as "languishing prisoners". No
act for this purpose had been passed since the May, 1757, session, the last
attempt, which has been made at the November-December, 1757, session,
having failed because the Lower House would not agree to amendments added
in the upper chamber by which debtors to the Lord Proprietary were not to
have the benefit of the law, and by which sureties for debtors to the Loan
Office were not also relieved of their obligations. In a preceding volume of the
Archives (LVI; ixxiv, 62, 509-514) there were printed in full in the Appendix
the petitions of six prisoners for debt, dated 1759-1760, some of whom had
already been in prison as long as four years, praying the enactment of legis-
lation for their relief.

In the Appendix of this volume will be found the petitions, dated 1761.1762,
of six other unfortunate prisoners. These petitions are printed in full because
of the sidelights they throw upon the horrors of the system of imprisonment
for debt. One of these prisoners had been in jail seven, and another five, years.
The debtors, who were often men with families, declared that they were
willing and anxious to make over everything they possessed to their creditors,
and after release would do all they could to pay their debts. In each case the
petition for relief was endorsed by the justices of the courts of the county
where the petitioner was confined. The impasse between these two houses ex-
tended over the period 1758-1765, and it was not until the latter year that a
debtors' act was passed (Hanson's Laws of Maryland made since MDCCLXIII;
Acts of 1765, Chapter XI). By this act Nathaniel Wickham, one of these peti-
tioners (p. 586) and John Turnbull (Arch. Md. LVI, 511.512), were released.
It was not until 1766 that an act was passed (Hanson's Laws; Acts of 1766,
Chapter III) under which George Baker (pp. 583.584) was released. The fate
of the other unfortunates has not been learned. None of these petitions were
presented to the Assembly.