120 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CONVENTION [1776.

art of war, be furnished with one ration per day each at the public
expense.

On motion, Resolved, That the committees of observation for
the several counties may remove the records of their respective
counties to some place of safety if they think proper.

The convention took into consideration the king's speech to
parliament on the 27th day of October last, and after some time
spent therein,

Resolved unanimously, That the following declaration be entered
on their journals :

We, the delegates of the freemen of Maryland in convention, af-
fected with the deepest concern by the opinion declared in the king's
speech to parliament on the 27th day of October last, and expressed
in the address of the lords spiritual and temporal to his majesty in an-
swer thereto, that the necessary preparations for defence made by
these colonies, are carried on for the purpose of establishing an
independent empire, and being desirous to remove from the mind
of the king, an opinion which we feel to be highly injurious to the
people of this province, and to declare and manifest to his majes-
ty, to the parliament, the people of Great Britain, and to the whole
world, the rectitude and purity of our intentions in the present op-
position to the measures of the British ministry and parliament, do
declare,

That the people of this province, strongly attached to the English
constitution, and truly sensible of the blessings they have derived
from it, warmly impressed with sentiments of affection for, and loy-
alty to, the house of Hanover, connected with the British nation by
the ties of blood and interest, and being thoroughly convinced, that
to be free subjects of the king of Great Britain, with all its conse-
quences, is to be the freest members of any civil society in the
known world, never did, nor do entertain any views or desires of
independency.

That as they consider their union with the mother country upon
terms that may insure to them a permanent freedom, as their high-
est felicity, so would they view the fatal necessity of separating
from her, as a misfortune next to the greatest that can befal them.

Descended from Britons, entitled to the privileges of English-
men, and inheriting the spirit of their ancestors, they have seen
with the most extreme anxiety the attempts of parliament to de-
prive them of those privileges, by raising a revenue upon them, and
assuming a power to alter the charters, constitutions, and internal
polity of the colonies without their consent. The endeavors of
the British ministry to carry those attempts into execution by military