Thomas Reading and the Issues of his Press

should not be ascribed to the Annapolis press of Thomas Reading, an issue
of the year 1707, and it will be so entered with a full description in the bib-
liographical appendix to this narrative.

THE BEGINNING OF THE PRINTED SESSION LAWS

Throughout the years that followed Reading's appointment to the office
of public printer in 1704, there are to be found in the journals of the Lower
House several significant references to his printing activities. It has been
said generally, even by persons familiar with Maryland historical bibliog-
raphy, that the printing of the session laws of the Province began with
Parks in the year 1726, but to indicate the incompleteness of the current
knowledge on this subject, one need point only to the copies of Maryland
session laws for the year 1719,¹ printed by Andrew Bradford of Philadel-
phia, which are preserved in the Library of Congress and in the Peabody
Library of Baltimore. The truth is, indeed, that the printing of session laws
began in Maryland more than a decade before even this isolated number of
the series issued from the Pennsylvania press.

It has been shown earlier in this chapter that in the resolution by which
the House had recognized Reading as public printer, specific mention had
been made of his obligation "to print all laws and other publiq matters."²
That this was not a form of words, that in accordance with the intention of
the Assembly, Reading began at this session to prin t the laws then enacted,
is believed to be indicated by the several entries which are now to be cited
from the Lower House journal, and by the bibliographical testimony which
will be adduced as a complement to that evidence.

In the year 1706, when Reading petitioned for permission to print the
body of laws and asked for the settlement of an annual salary upon him
for the printing of "all publick Matters as Speeches, Answers, Votes &
Proclamations &c.," the House resolved upon a rate of payment to be made
him "for what other Acts" should be "passed in any future Assemblys,"
and ordered that he be "allowed for the same in Proportion to the present
Body of the Laws."³ In the following year, April 15, 1707, it was "Resolved
That all the Laws Enacted this Session be printed pursuant to a former
Order of the House. And the Printer to be allowed for the same according
as before contracted for."⁴ Finally in the petition which Reading presented
to the Assembly in the year 1709, and in the action taken upon it by the

¹ See following chapter and bibliographical appendix.

² L. H. J., September 12, 1704, Archives of Maryland, 26:129.

³L. H. J., April 8, 1706, Archives of Maryland, 26: 577.

⁴L. H. J., April 15, 1707, Archives of Maryland, 27:128 (improperly headed April 13).

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