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GENTLEMEN of the LOWER HOUSE of
ASSEMBLY.
SEVERAL Ministers of the established Church, having presented
an Address to me, I take the Liberty (by Advice of the Lord
Proprietary's Council) of communicating it to you, and hope you
will think the Propositions this Address contains, deserve your serious
Attention.
December 8, 1773. ROBERT EDEN.
To his EXCELLENCY ROBERT EDEN, Esquire, Governor
and Commander in Chief in and over the Province of Maryland.
SIR,
WE the underwritten Clergymen of the established Church in
this Province, beg Leave to approach your Excellency with
our grateful Acknowledgments for your constant Attention to, and
Concern for the Interests of our Church: An Attention and Concern
which could never be more seasonable than at the present Juncture.
Our unhappy Situation is not unknown to your Excellency, nor,
we believe, unlamented. Most cordially do we with it were as much
in our Power, as it is in our Inclination, to restore the public Peace
and Tranquility. Impressed with this Sentiment, and grieved to
find our Usefulness to the Community so unhappily interrupted by
the unreasonable Prejudices which have been excited against our
Order and ourselves, we are not unwilling, with your Approbation,
to relinquish some of our undoubted Rights. We therefore wish
to submit to your Excellency's Consideration the following Proposi-
tions; the best we have been able to form; the Expediency or Inex-
pediency whereof we beg Leave to refer to your better Judgment.
If there be any well-founded Objection against the present Estab-
lishment, we think it is, that, in some few Instances, it gives too
large Salaries. To remove this, it is proposed, that whenever the
solvent taxable Persons in a Parish do, or shall exceed Twenty-
two Hundred, the Excess shall be appropriated still to the Service
of the Church, by being sunk into a Fund, to be lodged on stipulated
Conditions with the Treasurer on each Shore, for the Purpose of
further disseminating religious Instruction; that is to say, to be
applied, when sufficient for the Purpose, to the Maintenance of a
Reader, Lecturer, or Curate to be appointed by the Ordinary; and,
in Time to the Erection of new Parishes. This, we are persuaded
would be to pursue the Plan and Design of the first Framers of
our Act of religious Establishment; and, we trust, remove all just
Cause of Complaint. Whatever may be your Sentiments of this
Proposition, we assure ourselves, you will do us the Justice to believe,
that herein we have not been actuated by any merely selfish Motives,
but by the more becoming one of an honest Zeal for the Interests
of our holy Religion.
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Votes and
Proceedings
of the Lower
House,
printed by
A. C. Green
Dec. 8
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