by any act or resolution of the general assembly, (for the laws heretofore referred to reached no officers but such as had enlisted a certain number of recruits,) a more equal and liberal arrangement was certainly in contemplation, though apparently deferred until the resources of the state in the article of land should be better ascertained. Accordingly, an ample provision was made by the act of 1781, opening the land office, for fulfilling the engagements, or the intentions, of the state of Maryland towards its officers and soldiers, by the first enacting section of that law, which has been already given at large, and which, in substance, appropriated all the lands westward of Fort Cumberland, reserved or otherwise, except so far as they were fairly covered by warrants and locations in right of American citizens, and actually paid for, to the purpose of discharging the aforesaid engagements.     Under this general appropriation the lands remained until the session of April 1787, when a resolution was passed authorising the governor and council to appoint and employ some skilful person to lay out the manors, and such parts of the reserves and vacant lands, belonging to the state, lying to the westward of Fort Cumberland, as he might think fit, and capable of being improved, in lots of fifty acres each. In virtue of this resolution Mr. Francis Deakins was appointed for the purpose therein mentioned, who, before the fall session of 1788, had finished the survey, and had returned a general plot of the country westward of Fort Cumberland, on which four thousand one hundred and sixty-five lots of fifty acres each were laid off, besides sundry tracts which had been patented, with a distinction, on the plot, of the kinds which had been settled and improved, from those that remained uncultivated; and had also returned in two books, certificates of all the lots beforementioned.  The legislature, being now possessed of the necessary information, passed an act (November 1788 ch. 44) " to " dispose of the reserved lands westward of Fort Cumberland, in " Washington county, and to fulfil the engagements made by " this state to the officers and soldiers of the Maryland line in " the service of the United States," in which, after reciting the acts by which bounties of land had been promised for military service, the appropriation of 1781, the appointment of Mr. Deakins, and all the facts above stated; and adding that it appeared there were three hundred and twenty three families settled on six hundred and thirty six of the aforesaid lots, which those people had improved and cultivated, they ordained as follows, viz. that whereas, according to the most accurate account that could then be rendered by the auditor general, it appeared that there had been about the number of two thousand four hundred and seventy-five soldiers entitled