294 JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS [Feb. 26,

and in Committee rooms. All were in disarray, dust and
utter neglect. Doctor Ethen Allen, in 1861, alleged that
Mr. Ridgely's reports do not show as still in the government's
possession quite one-half of what he says he placed twenty-
five years before in the Council Chamber.

Fifty years ago, that accomplished scholar and well-known
citizen of Maryland, the late John Plenry Alexander, ex-
amined the condition of our Archives, found the papers in
disorder and decaying, and tried to enlist the sympathy of
the Legislature for their preservation, at least. His reports,
long aiter that time, in 1859 and 1860, disclose Mr. Alexan-
der's labors, renewed in that behalf at Annapolis, at Rome,
in Italy, and at London, in England. It was through his ef-
forts mainly, that the Reverend Dr. Ethen Allen was employ-
ed to complete the calendar of Maryland State Papers, which
still exists only in a folio manuscript volume deposited for
security with the Maryland Historical Society, and constantly
consulted by students as an index for their researches at Anna-
polis. These reports and the valuable report of Dr. Allen,
are respectfully commended to your notice, and their reprint-
ing will be of as much value as the reprinting of Mr. Ridgely's.

Your memorialist ventures to state his belief that a very
short time spent by you in personally examining the condi-
tion and disarray of what is still left to us scattered in the
public offices in Annapolis, would, without argument, result
in your prompt determination to reduce our papers to order,
and ensure their perpetual preservation. They are honorable
records of Provincial and State History ; nor is it impossible
that, in many cases, what has been lost here, may be recov-
ered by transcripts from the Record Offices in England.
Your memorialist is quite sure of the correctness of this as-
sertion, in as much as he inquired concerning certain missing
records during the Embassy of our late fellow citizen, Rev-
erdy Johnson, in England, and was assured by him, that
the Earl of Clarendon, then Minister of Foreign Affairs,
had promised every facility for the completion of our missing
volumes or papers. Nor is the collection and preservation of
the originals alone to be desired. Maryland ought to adopt
the same system as other States in perpetuating, and also in
promulgating her Provincial history. As a fair and just in-
centive, your memorialist respectfully solicits your attention
to the following array of twelve of our oldest sister-States,
in printing and disseminating their Records.

Connecticut has published at Hartford, in 1857—1852, two
volumes of "Records of the Colony and Plantation of New
Haven :