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L. H. J.
Liber No. 54
Nov. 18
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ings of that Law would not discover any great Fondness for that
Part of it which relates to Officers ffees and the Continuance of it
in the Year 1769 for one Year only, with the Intention of going
fully into the Consideration of Officers ffees at the next Session was
a Proof to all the World that the old Table of Fees was then looked
upon as defective in many Respects.
At the next Meeting of Assembly a new Regulation of Fees was
framed with many material Alterations of the Old, and in the Course
of that Session the Inspection Law fell.
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p. 256
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How this can afford, or even seem to afford, a strong Proof that
the Opinion of the Legislature has long been that the old Table as
it stood when the Inspection Law fell, was well adapted to the Pur-
poses of it we shall leave to your Honours to explain. It is said that
Deputy Commissaries were instituted by the Act of 1715 for the
Ease and Convenience of the People to give them an Option of doing
their Business at Home or at Annapolis but with no apparent View
of diminishing the frees of the Commissary General. It may be asked
whether publick Offices were erected for the Emolument of Officers
or for the Benefit of the People? Were Deputies appointed with any
apparent View of encreasing the Expence of the People by making
them pay twice for the same Service? Or are they to pay for the
Ease and Convenience afforded them by the Legislature? From the
Expression in that Act that in the Case of pauper Estates the Com-
missary General shall have no ffees it cannot be inferred that in all
other Estates he shall be allowed to charge ffees for Services not
done. The Prohibition had been just as necessary if no such Charge
as what is called the double Charge had ever been made; because
without it the Commissary General would have charged his ffees on
that part of the Business which upon every Administration as well
pauper as others must necessarily be transacted in his Office such as
recording the Inventory &.ta It is so repugnant to every Principle
of Reason and Justice that an Officer shall be allowed to charge for a
Service he does not perform and for which another is paid, that to
reason about it, is to weaken if possible the self Evidence of the
Proposition. Nothing but Usage can, in any sort, countenance a
Charge so manifestly unjust, and tho' that practice may have been
uninterrupted; yet it has nevertheless for many Years been a Subject
of general Complaint; and it is a Matter of Wonder, that it has been
so long submitted to by the People. In the Year 1753 this Point was
again agitated, and an alteration in that, as well as other Respects
attempted. The Sense of the Lower House was sufficiently shewn,
by their Bill with these Alterations of the Table of Fees, tho' they
were afterwards induced to come into the Amendments proposed by
the Upper House.
The Fact is too notorious to be denied, that the Table of Fees
under the first Inspection Law was then adopted and hath been
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