xxx Introduction.

inquiry to report, but no report was made at this session (pp. 52, 160, 173).
An act passed at the May, 1766, session authorizing the sale of certain lands
to Myar shows that the petitioners sought authority to give a good title to
land (Hanson's Laws of Maryland made since MDCCLXII1; 1787; acts of
1766, chapter 1). When at this same session the petition of Nathan Baker,
executor of Jethro Brown, was presented, it met the same fate as it had at the
October-November, 1763, session; no action was taken upon it (p. 142; Arch.
Md. LV11I; xxix). Why the Reverend Thomas Bacon, the rector of all
Saints Parish, Frederick County, and the author of Laws of Maryland at
Large, 1765, should have petitioned the General Assembly, and why the peti-
tion was later withdrawn is not disclosed by the record (pp. 43, 140, 145,
158). Perhaps it had something to do with the sale of copies of his Laws to
the Provincial authorities.

Schools. The Assembly at the 1765 sessions devoted little attention to
schools and education. The agitation for a college at Annapolis was not re-
newed. By an act passed on December 12, 1765, the Visitors of the Kent
County school were empowered to lay out part of the land belonging to the
county school in Chestertown in lots not exceeding two acres each and to lease
these lots to the highest bidders for a period not exceeding twenty-one years.
The act recited that by a law passed in 1741 the then visitors had been empow-
ered to lease out one moiety of the school land with the exception of ten acres,
and that the other moiety having become a "common" land, it was now use-
less to the school (pp. 296-297). At this session a bill was introduced in the
Lower House and referred to the consideration of the next Assembly, described
as an act supplementary to the "act for the Encouragement of Learning &
erecting Schools in the several counties". Its nature, however, is not disclosed
by the record. The house ordered that action upon it be postponed until the
next Assembly (pp. 171, 179, 195).

Care of the poor. The care of the dependent poor and infirm in Mary-
land had from the earliest times been provided for by placement in private
homes. Two far-separated sections of the Province united in asking the
Assembly at the November-December, 1765, session for the enactment of
legislation for the care of the poor, which is of some social interest. Petitions
were presented in the Upper House from the inhabitants of Baltimore, Anne
Arundel, and Worcester counties, praying for the establishment of "hospitals
or work-houses" in their respective counties. The upper chamber in referring
these petitions to the Lower House sent with them an accompanying message
saying that the people of those counties were desirous of being "relieved from
the great & heavy Charge, arising from the Allowance made for the Support
and Maintenance of the Poor", and that that house was anxious "to see some
better Regulation of this Matter universally introduced into this Province".
The message said that from an examination of the levy lists of ten counties
which had reported to the clerk of the Council for the past year (four counties
not having yet reported), it was found that the poor rate for these ten coun-
ties reached 1,307,642 pounds of tobacco, and it referred to the Lower House
for its consideration, the question "Whether the Erection of Work-houses or