Introduction. xxix

Capt. Campbell again. When Dr. Michael Wallace of Annapolis saw her on
April 14, he said none were very ill, and all the sick people needed was a change
of clothing and removal to shore. He added that the ship was clean and well-
provisioned and supplied. She cleared for Falmouth the last of August (Mary-
land Gazette, March 10, September i, 1774).

This time as usual there was a great flood of petitions from languishing
prisoners. Whenever languishing prisoners were spoken of, it meant prisoners
for debt: they were always so described, and only they. By an act of 1732
(Archives, XXXIX, 130-138), men—and women—in jail for debt were
allowed to petition for release therefrom. And petition they did. In these
sessions, almost a hundred prisoners, more than half of them from Baltimore
County and seven of the lot women, asked their freedom. The petition all
said the persons had already been in jail for long periods, that they would
willingly give up all their possessions if they could get out, but their creditors
refused to consent. Most of the petitions were granted and the petitioners
released in an act of Assembly of April 18, 1774. Two or three were dropped
because their creditors offered counter petitions or because they were suspected
of fraud against their creditors. All were required to deliver up to the sheriff
everything they had, and to take oath that they had nothing left, and no claim
to anything. All they retained was their working tools and the clothing of the
family. In connexion with these people imprisoned for debt, there should be
kept in mind the description of the Anne Arundel County jail only a few years
earlier. In 1766 a special petition from the prisoners there had led the Lower
House committee of grievances to investigate whether things were as bad as
the petition claimed they were. The report of the committee was eloquent
beyond possibility of improvement: "Your committee in pursuance of the
Special Order of your Honble House ..... beg leave to Inform your Hofible
House That they have Visited the said Goal and find that the same is kept so
filthy and Nasty that it is excessively Nauseous In so much that Your Com-
mittee are Apprehensive that the Prisoners are in Great danger from its
offensive Stench" (Archives, LXI, 27-28). The sheriff of Anne Arundel in
1766 was Joseph Galloway.

For several years now, attempts had been made to relieve the Assembly of
the pressure of these petitions and to permit the languishing prisoners to go
instead to the courts. In 1765 Parker Selby, then a delegate from Worcester
County, later sheriff of that county, introduced a general act for the relief of
insolvent debtors, but nothing came of it then. It dragged along for two or
three sessions and was defeated in December 1766. Now in October and
November 1773 a movement began in the Upper and Lower Houses simul-
taneously without a petition (pp. 10, 32, 86), and, after much manoeuvering
between the houses, a bill was passed, and sealed by the Governor. In the last
stages of its passage the Lower House rejected amendments proposed by the
Upper House (p. 350), and there is nothing in the record to show that it was
sent back to the Upper House, or that the Lower House later changed its mind
and accepted the Amendments. But undoubtedly that was done, for the bill
entitled "An Act for the Relief of insolvent Debtors" was engrossed and