A History of Printing in Colonial Maryland

the last reference to Jones's proposal which was entered in the journal of
either house. 11 does not appear from the obviously incomplete record which
has been quoted that Jones was given authority to proceed with his publi-
cation, but the event shows that he proceeded none the less, and on the
title-page of his book, he declared that the compilation had been made by
order of the Governor and both Houses of Assembly.

In one sense, the compilation of laws which Jones now presented to the
public is the most important collection of the statutes of colonial Maryland.
As one of the last acts of her reign Queen Anne had commanded a second
revision of the whole body of Maryland law. On April 29, 1715,¹ Governor
Hart had communicated to the delegates the royal instructions, and on the
seventh of the following month the House had proceeded with the required
revision.² The body of law determined by the Assembly on this occasion,
as McMahon, the historian of the Maryland constitution, wrote many years
later, "formed the substratum of the statute law of the Province, even down
to the Revolution; and the subsequent legislation of the colony effected no
very material alterations in the system of general law then established."³
It was this "system of general law then established" which caused the super-
session of the collection of laws published by Reading in 1707 and rendered
necessary the new compilation which Jones proposed and carried into effect
in the year 1718.

In this book, which was published through the Philadelphia press of An-
drew Bradford in the year 1718,⁴ the editor, Evan Jones, found himself in
the position of a man who thinks to please all parties, but who in the out-
come contrives probably to give universal offence. In his Preface⁵ he attrib-
uted to Governor Hart all the virtues of a paragon among governors; he
spoke well of the Proprietary, recently come again into his own, and voiced
the most loyal sentiments in regard to Church and King. Moreover, in his
opening paragraph, he expressed the mind of the Lower House when he
wrote that the Maryland acts "are not expected to speak, but where the
General Statutes of England are silent." He continued with the informa-
tion that until the publication of this book the statutes had existed only in

¹ L. H. J., April 29, 1715, Archives of Maryland_t30:105.

² L. H. J., May 7, 1715, Archives of Maryland) 30:129. In Chapter Five of this narrative reference is made to
the part played in John Peter Zenger's trial by the celebrated colonial lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, at one time a
resident of Kent County, Maryland. He represented that county in the Maryland Assembly of 1715, and as a
member of its committee on laws doubtless contributed to the success of the notable revision of that year. See
Sterner, Bernard C., in Pennsylvania Magazine of History, v. 20.

³ McMahon, J. V. L., An Historical View of the Government of Maryland, Baltimore, 1831, p. 282.

⁴ Description in bibliographical appendix under year 1718.

⁵ Reprinted, Archives of Maryland, 38: 429.

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