xii Introduction

of the state debt by the national government the Council also was charged with the execution
of the Law of 1790 which reissued bonds bearing revised interest rates under the new financial
system. The names and amounts held by both the creditors and the debtors of the state who
were affected by the act appear in the journals.

Some other reflections of national problems may be seen in the decision of the Council
to prevent privateering or other belligerent acts against European powers, in particular from
Baltimore, as an illegal infringement upon the state's reissuing, for its own jurisdiction, the
Presidential Proclamation of Neutrality on May 4, 1793. The very act of reissuance was witness
to the still beclouded boundaries between state and federal power. Too, the Council heard and
rendered decisions on all disputed elections to federal and local offices. Several of those pro-
ceedings enlighten our knowledge of the electoral practices of the times. Again, the Council
examined into cases of naturalization and also conferred citizenship.

In one important decision the Council declared unconstitutional a law of 1780 which
allowed the election of the clerk of the state Court of Appeals by its own justices, declaring in
effect that the Constitution of 1776 was superior to the statute law which was in conflict with it.
Additional proof that the Council was a vital force in the governmental machinery of the state
may be seen in such exercises of power as its quarantining of Baltimore because of a yellow
fever epidemic, and in its handling of Revolutionary War veterans' affairs, entailing adjustment
of their depreciated pay, claims to western land, which had been set aside for them, and
allowances to their widows and orphans.

- 2 -

The preceding volume published all of the bound folio dated November 27, 1784-
November 10, 1788, but only a small part of the folio dated November 11, 1788-November 11,
1791. This volume completes the publication of that folio and includes the entire following
folio. Also, the dates of the folios are printed at the top of the page so that the pagination of
the original, interpolated within the printed text, may easily be ascertained. Furthermore, the
title of this series has been corrected by deleting the word "State." Several preceding volumes
were entitled the "Journal and Correspondence of the State Council." Yet the word "State"
is nowhere to be found in the documents themselves, nor is it employed in the Constitution of
1776 which set up the Council. It was not even used in the newspapers of the period, nor in
correspondence referring to this organ of government.

Other than the aforementioned changes the editorial procedures are the same as in the
last volume. Punctuation has been supplied where it was deemed necessary, particularly for
the sake of clarity; but where the meaning seemed unclear, the sentence or statement has been
allowed to stand as in the original document. Abbreviations remain as in the original. How-
ever the clerk's inventive abbreviations have been spelled out by interpolation. Superscript
letters have been brought to the line and the few marginal notations in the original have been
incorporated into the text and duly noted. Sums of money in pounds have been punctuated for
clarification. The clerks had consistent problems with the spelling "gaol," which according to
Thomas Sheridan's 1780 edition of A General Dictionary of the English Language was a com-
mon error. The word has been allowed to stand uncorrected, but other misspellings have been
indicated by sic.

I wish to thank not only the present Publications Committee of the Maryland Historical
Society, but also the 1966 Committee under the Chairmanship of Dr. Charles A. Barker who