xciv Introduction.

It appears from the rather voluminous correspondence that passed between
Governor Sharpe and the Proprietary's Secretary, Hugh Hamersley, on the
subject, that John Stewart, "Contractor for the Transportation of Convicts",
operating under the firm name of Stewart & Campbell, of London, and also
the firm of Sedgely & Company of Bristol, made strenuous efforts to have the
Proprietary dissent to the quarantine law, and failing this, to have the King in
Council annul it. It is known that most of these felons sent to Maryland
were from Newgate Prison, London, and from Bucks and other counties on
that circuit (Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial Series, 1766-1783; pp. 115-
116). Sharpe, under date of July 27, 1767, wrote to Hamersley, that dis-
tempers had at various times been brought into the Province in overcrowded
ships, and that only the preceding autumn Mrs. Blake of the prominent Queen
Anne's County family of that name, and twenty of the Blake slaves, had died
in the space of two months of a distemper, apparently jail fever, communi-
cated to them by servants imported in a "crowded, infectious ship." Sharpe
took a shot at his political enemy, Thomas Ringgold, who represented Stew-
art & Campbell, saying that Ringgold had sought in the house to have the
title of the act changed in derision to "A Bill to prevent the Peopling of a
Young Country." Sharpe declared that as a matter of fact few shipmasters
overcrowded their vessels, but that the Stewart and Sedgely firms had not
enough vessels to carry comfortably more than half the convicts, which under
their contracts they were at times obliged to take when the jails were emptied,
and that they were indifferent to the consequences. The Governor said that,
although the act was in some degree defective and severe, it could be easily
amended, and that at the next session he would recommend the establishment
of a lazaretto. He added that as a matter of fact since the passage of the
law both contractors had already somewhat improved conditions by installing
ventilators and ranges of ports, although in a recently arrived ship there
were crowded in it more than one hundred and fifty persons besides the crew
(pp. 412-413, 419, 421; Arch. Md. XIV, 413). The contractors, however,
soon began to give up the fight against the measure when it was evident it
would be supported by the King in Council, the Lords of Trade to whom it
had been referred, and the London merchants (ibid. 432, 435, 436). Ring-
gold, however, continued his attack upon the Quarantine Law in the columns
of the Maryland Gazette, but in this newspaper war got the worst of the
controversy (Arch. Md. XIV, 421). There are many other references in the
Sharpe Correspondence to the Quarantine Law (ibid. 411, 412, 419, 421, 470,

475, 524, 535)-

At the 1768 Assembly the Quarantine Law was again brought forward.
On June 16 Sharpe sent a message to the Lower House, saying that the con-
tractors for the transportation of felons from England to America had made
grievous complaint against the Quarantine Law as oppressive, unreasonable,
and cruel, and that he thought it might in some respects be amended. He
recommended that the house give this consideration. It is known that Sharpe
was anxious to have a lazaretto established. In order that the contractors'
views as represented to his Majesty's ministers might be known, he trans-