xlviii Introduction.

house in the proceedings of the Stamp Act Congress (p. 181). On Decem-
ber 6 this committee submitted for the consideration of the house a letter of
instructions to Garth which it had drawn up, and on December 9, this was
approved, and the Speaker ordered to sign and transmit it to him (pp. 206-211,
216). In this he was told of the unanimous approval by the Lower House of
the action of the Stamp Act Congress, and of his selection as the Agent of
the house; and that through him a happy issue was hoped for, because of his
known "Attachment to the General Interest of America (intimately connected
with those of the Mother Country) and the common Rights of Fellow Sub-
jects." With this were sent him copies of the proceedings of the Congress
and its declaration of rights, and the addresses to the King and Parliament,
together with "A Piece Entitled Considerations of the Propriety of imposing
Taxes in the British Colonies". The last mentioned "Piece" was of course
Daniel Dulany's recent and widely applauded pamphlet against the right of
Parliament to impose taxes on the colonies, familiarly known as Dulany's
Considerations. Together with these was sent a printed translation of the
Maryland charter from which it was said some useful hints might be obtained.
This letter of instructions is a lengthy one covering some five printed pages
of this volume (pp. 206-211), and deals with general objections to the Stamp
Act shared by Maryland with all the colonies, and with objections which apply
more especially to this Province. The interested reader is referred to the letter
of instructions itself, as only a few of the points brought out in it can be touched
upon here. The letter declared that the charter of Maryland was to be regarded
"to amount to a strong Declaration and Promise by the Crown that its In-
habitants should not by their Removal [to Maryland] be stript of the Rights
of Englishmen and the Royal Faith stands thereby engaged for our quiet En-
joyment of those Rights, the British Colonies no doubt as British Subjects
are entitled to those Rights independent of the Charters of the particular
Colonies...... It is useless to remark that if the Colonies had not forfeited
the Rights they brought over as Englishmen and British Subjects that they
are not to be taxed but with their own Consent and are Entitled to Tryal
by Juries". The letter went on to say that Maryland and Virginia differed
from New York and the other colonies in that their staple was tobacco, which
employed all the planters' labor so that there was no time for manufactur-
ing, and as tobacco was now of little value, that with the continually increas-
ing debt there would be no money (specie) or credit for the purchase of goods
manufactured in England, and that this would compel the people to turn to
raising sheep, hemp, and flax by which England would lose the tobacco trade.
It was explained that in the appendix to Dulany's Considerations these facts
were well brought out. It was pointed out that the mother country in requir-
ing that all tobacco be first shipped to England, where much of it was resold
to foreigners, added upwards of a half million pounds sterling annually to her
trade at the expense of the tobacco colonies. The restrictions upon the export
of iron, save to Great Britain and to North Europe, also worked great hard-
ship upon Maryland, English merchants reshipping it elsewhere at a profit.
As a result of this balance of trade against the Province and the consequent