Introduction. ixxvii

piling this volume bears the title/L.H.J. No. 52. For some sessions the original
rough notes of the Lower House clerk have also been preserved. These are found
in small unbound stitched folios. Thus there have been preserved the rough
notes for the session of 1762, but not for the session of 1763. That there was
occasionally a doubt raised as to the accuracy of the journal as kept by the
clerk is shown by a motion which was passed by the Lower House at the 1763
session ordering that in the future a special committee be appointed at the
opening of each session to compare the journal of the preceding session with
the original entries (p. 332). Both John Allen Thomas, the Clerk at the 1762
session, and Michael McNamara who returned as Clerk of the Lower House
in 1763, were much better scribes than the recording clerk in the Upper House,
if they are respectively personally responsible for the transcribed entries in
the official Lower House journal. Certainly we find them guilty of few
omissions or mistakes in spelling; and their punctuation and paragraphing are
also quite good, although less elaborate than in Green's printed versions. The
rough notes and the entries in the official libers seem to be in the same handwrit-
ing. Green, however, arranges tables of figures or lists of names in a clearer way.
The editor has used the arrangement of Green's tables rather than the form in
which these tabulations appear in the manuscript libers. Green occasionally omits
a paragraph or two when he feels that their insertion is superfluous. Neither
the manuscript libers nor the printed versions enter the counts of the affirmative
or negative votes on measures as was formerly the custom. The editor has
added these figures to the text in brackets. Green designates those voting on
various measures with the preliminary title "Messieurs". These titles are at
this date not to be found in the manuscript libers, and have of course been
omitted throughout in the text of this volume.

Of the laws passed at each session there are two contemporary records—
one, the large official manuscript folio libers in which are enrolled the acts of
several sessions, designated as the "Laws"; and the laws of each session
separately printed by Jonas Green, familiarly known as "Green's Session Laws".
In the manuscript libers are enrolled in full both the public laws and the private
acts. The latter are entered by title only in "Green's Session Laws". Green,
as required by law, also added marginal notes summarizing paragraph by
paragraph the purport of each section of the several acts. These marginal notes
as they appear in Green are re-printed in brackets as marginal notes in this
volume. Although the manuscript text has been followed in printing the laws
in this volume, for greater clarity Green's paragraph arrangement has been
made use of throughout. These printed session laws are also occasionally to be
found in an interesting variant form in the collection of manuscript and printed
material, once the property of the lords Proprietary in England and now in
the Maryland Historical Society, known as the Calvert Papers. They are
printed on one side of the paper, which is heavy and with wide margins. The
sheets are fastened together by tape at one corner, not bound together in pam-
phlet form as are the ordinary issues of Green's Session Laws. In addition to
these several series of laws for each session, there should be mentioned that