112 court of appeals of maryland

Maryland reports down to 1851. Until that year,
the several court clerks, with or without outside
assistance, regularly took notes of arguments made
in court, and with abstracts from the records made
up their volumes entirely on their own responsi-
bility. Their notes of arguments on the Western
Shore, as has been said, are all extant, in the keep-
ing of the court. Harris continued his work, but
progressed slowly with it. McHenry collaborated
up to 1818, when the two had covered cases de-
cided up to 1799, and had reported some addi-
tional Provincial Court cases in their fourth vol-
ume. Then the work stopped, apparently because
it was not profitable and McHenry was unwill-
ing to go on. In the preface to McHenry's work
on the Ejectment Law of Maryland ¹⁸ he described
the undertaking as one "which individuals of
themselves cannot accomplish without making too
great a sacrifice." But Reverdy Johnson was
found willing to assist after that time; and in 1821,
Harris and Johnson brought the reports up so
far as to cover cases of the year 1805. The cases
reported were still selected principally from
among those of the Provincial and General Court.
The next volume, 2 Harris & Johnson, published
in 1826, took up cases heard and decided by the
Court of Appeals from 1806, while Harris was
clerk. Harris kept the work going until his death
in 1829, the last of his volumes, 2 Harris & Gill,
having been published in that year, in collabora-
tion with Richard W. Gill, a young attorney, who
later (1836) became clerk of the court. And in

18. John McHenry, Ejectment Law of Maryland, Frederick Town,
1822.