Introduction. xxxv

be paid before a conveyance to land be recorded. In a previous volume will be
found "Instructions" to this effect, issued by Frederick, Lord Baltimore, the
Proprietary (Arch. Md. LIX, pp. 356-358). In explanation of this change of
front on the part of the Proprietary it should be said that Daniel Dulany
on September 10, 1764, had advised the Proprietary that he was entitled to
collect the alienation fee under his charter rights, and that even if an act were
passed making no provision for its payment, he would still have the power to
collect it in the Court of Chancery (Arch. Md. LIX, lxviii, 357-358; The
Calvert Papers, No. 2, Md. Hist. Soc. 1894, 234-239). With Dulany's opinion
it was felt by the Proprietary the act could be safely passed.

Water mills. The construction of water mills had been encouraged by an
act passed in 1704, granting various extensive privileges to those erecting
mills, and by supplementary acts passed in 1753 and 1756 the rates of toll
that might be charged by millers were redefined, and the erection of roads
and bridges over mill dams and mill races required. At this 1766 session an
act was passed by a. vote of 22 to 14 repealing all parts of the law of 1704 for
the encouragement of the erection of water mills, except that section limiting
the rates of toll for milling (pp. 167, 230). While the reason for repeal is
not disclosed in the journals of the two houses, or in the act itself, it seems
certain that growing interest in fish conservation, as shown by bills introduced
at this session and those passed at the next Assembly, had directed attention
to the damage done to "the breed of fish" by dams on important water courses
(pp. xcvii-xcviii, 230, Arch. Md. LIX, xxxiii).

The rest of the acts passed at the November-December, 1766, session,
numbering seven, were local and private laws. The most important and far
reaching of these was in the nature of both a local and a private act, requiring
Thomas Harrison and other land owners "to remove a nuisance in Baltimore
Town, by filling in a salt water marsh known as "Harrison's Marsh" on the
east side of Baltimore Town, bounded in a general way by Jones Falls, Fred-
erick Street, and the harbor, and to permit the owners to lay out streets, lanes
and alleys, and sell building lots, the land thus reclaimed to become part of
Baltimore (pp. 253-258). As an interesting chapter of early Baltimore history,
this is discussed quite fully in a special section (pp. xc-xci).

Baltimore County roads. An act for amending (improving) and repairing
the public roads of Baltimore County, passed at this session by the deciding
vote of the Speaker, provided for the appointment by the justices of that
county of "overseers of roads" in various sections of the county. These over-
seers were to keep the roads cleared to a required width, and to keep the road-
beds, bridges, and causeways in repair. Wagons and carts loaded with iron
ore or pig iron might not travel on the public roads with wheel treads less than
five inches wide. A road tax of 10 pounds of tobacco was levied on all the
taxable inhabitants of the county. The overseers were to be paid 6o pounds
of tobacco a day for their services. An interesting feature of the law is that
compulsory labor on roads, hitherto provided for by law, was abolished, and
laborers working on the roads were to be paid wages for their work on orders
of the overseers upon the county court (pp. 259-262). As originally drawn