Proclamation warrants, also, are taken to affect land which is in some measure vacant, but do not enter into the general idea of warrants to take up vacant land. They are taken out to affect land which has been regularly surveyed, and in a general way, a certificate thereof returned, but on which the composition remains unpaid after the expiration of a year from the date of the warrant. A person believing a certificate to be in this predicament has a right, by usage, to satisfy himself of the fact, by enquiry at the land office; always supposing that his question points to a particular certificate, or warrant, for no general enquiries are answered. Finding the certificate to be liable, he demands a warrant, upon which, the register, by an endorsement on the certificate, recites the application, and states that the party requiring such warrant will be entitled thereto upon his paying one tenth of the composition remaining due. The party takes the certificate, so endorsed, to the treasurer, who receiving the one tenth of the whole sum due for caution and improvements, issues his titling, or order, to the register to grant the warrant, as desired; specifying and describing, in the said order, the certificate, in all its circumstances, and the sum which has been paid; whereupon the warrant is issued, and the certificate deposited again in the office, where it remains, still capable of being patented to the original owner, or his representative, in case no return should, as it often happens, be made under the proclamation warrant, and the proclamated certificate should, after the expiration of that warrant, be compounded on,     According to the practice of the office, a person may also obtain a proclamation warrant on a certificate not returned. If the owner of a certificate chuses to proclamate it himself instead of compounding on it, he brings it to the office, without examination if he thinks proper, and on its receiving the endorsement before mentioned, he takes it to the treasurer, and obtains an order for a warrant. If a person means to proclamate the certificate of another, not returned or compounded on, he demands a copy of it from the surveyor, and producing this at the office, he obtains the endorsement, order, and warrant, in like manner. In these cases the certificate or copy remains in the office, but no patent can ever be granted upon the certificate so proclamated. If a person desires to affect, by proclamation, a survey made on the Eastern shore, but of which the certificate (being of course returned under a warrant issued before the first of March 1796) remains in the Western shore land office, he obtains from that office an attested copy of the said certificate, on which a proclamation warrant is issued from the office of the Eastern shore in the manner before described.