Bacon's Laws the Typographical Monument of Colonial Maryland

but that the price to subscribers should be adjusted when the work had
been completed. Furthermore, it was recommended, that in any bill to be
brought in for carrying on the design, it should be expressly declared that
any laws now in dispute should be considered as in the same state "as if
the said Body had not been collected, compiled and published; and that
no Law whatever, or any Part thereof, shall be repealed, abrogated, or made
null or void, or receive any additional Force or Strength, thereby." The
Lower House had no desire that Bacon's or any other collection of laws
should have the force of a code until the objectionable "Tonnage" act should
have been expunged from the books. A week or so later, the House accepted
the report of its committee and deferred full consideration of it to the next
session of the Assembly.¹

In the October session of the year 1760 a bill was introduced entitled
"An Act for Encouraging a Collection and Publication of the Laws of this
Province," by the terms of which a committee was to examine and com-
pare the laws of Mr. Bacon's proposed collection with the originals and
report their findings to the next session of Assembly. In caseof the approval
of that Assembly, Bacon was to have leave to proceed to print and publish
the collection. It was provided, as had been suggested by the committee of
the year 1758, that no additional force was to be lent to any disputed law
by reason of its inclusion in that volume, and further carrying out the rec-
ommendations of that report, it was agreed that in the event of publication
Bacon should be allowed three hundred pounds currency for eighteen copies
"cast off upon good Paper, in large Folios, and with a fair Type," the pub-
lic copies to be delivered, one to each house, the Provincial court and each
county court. This bill was indorsed by the Lower House "will pass," but
it was returned to that body from the Upper House with the uncompromis-
ing endorsement, "will not pass."² The struggle had begun, and had it not
been for the interest of Governor Sharpe in the project, it is likely that the
clashing of irreconcilable opinions would have prevented forever the pub-
lication of Bacon's collection.

In the session of April 1761³ this bill or another of the same tenor was
reintroduced and passed by the Lower House after having been amended
to read that "the Act by which the Lord Proprietary takes the 12d. Ster-
ling per Hogshead on all Tobacoes exported out of this Province, be not
inserted in the Collection of Laws to be made by Mr. Thomas Bacon, but

¹V. & P., December 23, 1758.

² V. & P., October 15, 1760; Maryland Gazette, October 30, 1760.

³V.& P., April 25, 1761.

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