lxviii Introduction.

appeal to the King for the arbitration of the dispute with the Upper House
about the salary of its Clerk (Arch. Md. XIV, 356). Frederick, the Lord Pro-
prietary, complained bitterly of the "Liberty Lottery", which he characterized
as an attack upon him "as if he were a Bashaw" (ibid. 371). Sharpe wrote
again to Hamersley on March 11, 1767, that the scheme for the £iooo lottery
which was advertised in the Gazette was going badly, and would have gone
still worse had not the Pennsylvanians bought whole books of tickets, and that
subscriptions to the fund had come in but slowly (ibid. 384). When the day,
May 25, 1767, came for the drawing to take place, it was postponed because all
the tickets had not been sold; and Sharpe questioned whether the leaders were
really anxious to push the appeal, so that they could give as the reason for
not doing so, that their committee had been denied access to the public records
which would have decided the matters in dispute in their favor (ibid. 391).
When Sharpe wrote again on June 9th, he referred to a rumor that Garth was
to petition the Crown for an order that the Assembly be required to supply
support for an agent by a special tax (ibid. 395, 398). Failure of the lottery
scheme and the raising of a £1000 fund by subscriptions for the support of an
agent, forced the Lower House, at the 1768 session, in order to keep its record
with the public clear, to attempt by other means to raise funds for this purpose,
although it knew well such an attempt would be promptly killed in the upper
chamber. A bill was accordingly drawn up by a committee, headed by Matthew
Tilghman, with Ringgold, Hall, and Chase as the other members, imposing
a four pence export duty on tobacco, which was promptly passed by the Lower
House and as promptly rejected by the Upper House without amendment, ex-
planation, or the exchange of messages (pp. 346, 353, 365, 299, 315, 412).

In the seventeen-month interval between the 1766 and the 1768 sessions,
a spirited dispute relating to the public records occurred between the Lower
House on the one hand and the Governor and Council on the other. The Lower
House sought to bring the agency question before the King in Council and to
secure an order to the Upper House from the Crown directing it to agree to
an appropriation by the Assembly for this purpose. To prepare a full statement
of the agency question the Lower House further resolved that its committee,
headed by the Speaker, should have authority to have access to all records in
any public offices "not only of this house but also of the Upper House, Gov-
ernor and Council, and Governor and Privy Council" (pp. 216-217), and here
the Lower House found itself up against a stone wall. Although it does not
appear from the journals of the Lower House for the period covered by this
volume, it is disclosed by the Sharpe Correspondence that the Governor
refused to allow the committee to have access to his personal records and to
the records of his "Privy Council", which he declared were Proprietary and
not public records. Writing, March 11, 1767, to Hugh Hamersley, the Gov-
ernor told of the appointment by the Lower House of a committee "to meet
here during the Recess of Assembly vested with full power & Authority (if a
Resolve of the House could confer it) to rummage all the publick Offices, that
of the Privy Council not excepted, without asking leave of me or any One else,
which had the Government submitted to or connived at a Precedent would have