Introduction. xxxiii

ances of old laws or acts supplementing them. Of these twenty-seven acts,
nineteen were general laws, seven were local laws, and one a private law. Brief
references to some of these fifteen new laws will be made here, but some of the
more important new acts are discussed in greater detail in other sections of the
Introduction. Mention has already been made in a previous paragraph to the
passage of the most important act of the session, that providing for the pay-
ment of the public debt of the Province by the issue of bills of credit (pp. 264-
275). This receives special consideration later (pp. c-cii).

Quarantine law. The law establishing a quarantine against ships carrying
infectious diseases, especially directed against overcrowded vessels bringing in
felons from England to be sold as servants, was the first Maryland law passed
for such a purpose (pp. 262-264). Its passage, favored by the Governor, the
Assembly, and the people at large, aroused the opposition of the British shipping
contractors, engaged in this profitable but nauseous trade, and was followed
by unsuccessful attempts made in England by the contractors to have the act
dissented to by the Proprietary, or if that failed, by the Crown. The quaran-
tine law and its repercussions in England are discussed later (pp. xciii-xcv).

Apprentices. A bill for apprenticing children, whose fathers had removed
from the counties where the children resided and who were thus likely to
become public charges, which had been passed by the Lower House at the
November-December, 1765, session, and been rejected by the Upper House
for reasons not disclosed by the record, has been discussed in the Introduction
to a preceding volume of the Archives (LIX, xxv). It was doubtless the same
bill which was brought in again at the November-December, 1766, session,
under the title "An Act to Ease the Inhabitants of this Province and to Em-
power the Justices of the Several Counties to bind out the persons therein
mentioned as Apprentices." Its purpose was to relieve the public from the cost
of providing for their care. It promptly passed the Lower House, but when
it reached the Upper House was amended in several details. The bill as passed
provided that when fathers had removed without giving security for the
support of their children, the justices of the county courts, in cases where there
was not sufficient estate for the care of children, should bind them out to some
mariner, handicraft tradesman, or other person who was a Protestant, to be
taught "Trades and may not be Rigorously used or Turned to common Labour
at the Ax or Hoe." Boys were to be bound until twenty-one years old, and
girls until eighteen or marriage. An amendment added by the Upper House
provided that if the court should find that the child's mother were living in the
same county and when summoned before the court, was able to furnish security
for its maintenance, she was to have its custody. The act further provided
that if the father returned and could maintain the children, the court might
annul the apprenticeship (pp. 114, 154, 187, 190, 235, 238). As the act
does not provide that a deserted child, if of Roman Catholic birth, should
be bound out to a master or mistress of the same faith, one wonders if the
absence of such a provision had caused the rejection of the bill by the Upper
House at the 1765 session, but finding that the Lower House was obdurate
on this point, it had, at the 1766 session, passed the bill without such a pro-
3