lxiv Introduction.

period. The accumulating public debt now amounted to over £40,000 current
money. Feeling ran so high that mob violence had been threatened at a recent
session of the Assembly to force an agreement between the two houses. The
principal bone of contention was the payment of the salary of the clerk of
the Governor's Council, the Lower House insisting that this should be paid
by the Lord Proprietary whose creatures the Upper House and the Council
were, the Proprietary that it should be paid out of the public levy. The interested
reader is referred for the history of this dispute since 1756 to the introductions
of recent volumes of the Archives (LX, liv; LVI, lxviii; LVII, lxix; LIX,
lxix).

At the brief May, 1766, session, the Journal of Accounts came only casually
to the fore in the Assembly proceedings, doubtless since the situation had be-
come so critical, and matters behind the scenes were so moving, that it was
felt a compromise between the two houses would be agreed upon when the
Assembly should meet again later in the year. On May 24th the Journal was
brought into the Lower House by John Goldsborough of the Committee on
Accounts, together with a list of debts due to sundry persons on account of
the late war, and was promptly adopted and sent to the Upper House. The
Upper House immediately returned the Journal with the brief message that
while they approved the Book of Accounts with its allowances made to the
militia who had served on the frontier in the late war and the money spent for
provisions and other necessities for their use, as well as the payment of charges
due householders for quartering his Majesty's troops in the Province, the
house could not approve the Journal unless there were included in it the back
pay and current allowances due to the Clerk of their house (p. 12). The Lower
House made no reply to this message, nor is further reference to the journal
at the May session to be found.

The November-December, 1766, Assembly, was to see the adoption of a
Journal of Accounts brought about by a compromise agreement between the
two houses to refer to the Crown for arbitration the disputed question as to
the payment of the salary of the clerk of the Upper House. The accumulated
public debt had now become too great to be paid by public levy so it was
further agreed that the money for this and other purposes be raised bv an
issue of Bills of Credit, paper money, secured by Bank of England stock owned
by the Province and deposited in the hands of trustees in England.

The Journal on November 15th was brought into the Lower House by
Thomas Wright of Queen Anne's County for the Committee on Accounts,
approved, and sent to the Upper House (p. 167). In a message the Upper
House dissented to its adoption, not only because it contained no allowances
for the salary of its clerk, but also because no allowance had been made to the
Governor for his Seals to the Proclamations notifying the public of the Acts
of Parliament repealing the Stamp Act, nor to Jonas Green for printing the
Proclamations (p. 102). Upon receipt of this message the Lower House, on
a motion that a conference with the Upper House on the Journal be proposed,
voted 16 to 16 on the motion, the Speaker casting the deciding vote in the
negative (p. 173); but the next day the Lower House reversed itself by send-