Introduction. xxvii

many members and the slight prospect of any further benefits accruing from a
continuance of the session at that season of the year. This message was
addressed to the members of both the Upper and Lower Houses (pp. 333, 390).

While the following incident did not involve any important difference of
principles, as did the foregoing dispute, it is a picturesque event in the relations
between the Governor and the Assembly. On November 26, 1771, it seems,
Governor Eden notified the Lower House that the Deputies of the Delawares,
Munsies and Mohekins were coming to Maryland in regard to matters men-
tioned in their speech a copy of which the Governor was sending to the Lower
House. The Governor asked that they be accommodated while in Maryland as
well as given a present (p. 210).

In their address to the Governors of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia,
the Chiefs of these Indian tribes said that three years ago they had sold to the
English all the land on the east side of the Ohio River down to the Cherokee
River and gave a deed to the same to Sir William Johnson. That since that
time a great many more people have come to the Ohio to settle, that quarrels
have resulted, and Indians and white settlers have been killed. The Indian
Chiefs asked that steps be taken to stop these intrusions. They said that they
were alarmed to hear that the English colonists were meeting with the Cherokees
and the Six Nations in order to strengthen their friendship which made them
think that the English are forming bad designs against them (pp. 210-211).

Two days later, after considering the Governor's message, the Lower House
resolved that a sum not exceeding fifty pounds sterling should be paid to the
order of his Excellency for the accommodation of the Deputies of the Delaware,
Munsie and Mohekin Indians while in the province (pp. 214-215). In a message
to Eden informing him of this resolution, the Delegates said that as they felt
that as the people of Maryland could not be affected by any claim of the Indians
to their lands, they did not think it proper to burden them with any sum to be
given the Indians as a present (pp. 216-217). On the same day the Lower
House sent to the Upper House a copy of their attitude in this matter with
which the upper chamber concurred (pp. 67-68, 216-217).

RELATIONS BETWEEN THE UPPER AND LOWER HOUSES

The "Act for amending the Staple of Tobacco for preventing Frauds in his
Majesty's Customs and for the Limitation of Officers Fees," which, as we have
seen, was the cause of dispute between the Governor and Lower House was also
the reason of disagreement between the Upper and Lower Houses. It was on
October 10, 1771, that leave was given to bring in a bill similar to that act of
1763 which had not been reenacted during the fall sessions of the General
Assembly in 1770 (p. 98).

Four days later the Upper House referred to the Lower House a petition of
several subscribing clergymen of the Church of England in Maryland stating
that while under the provisions of a law passed in 1704, which was continued
except for a short interval until 1747, they had received forty pounds of tobacco
per poll, yet that by the terms of the Act of 1763, which had expired in 1770,
they had only received thirty instead of forty pounds of tobacco. The ministers