Maryland Laws Printed in Philadelphia and London

ill-written manuscripts without indexes, so that "The Laws of the Province
lay so obscure, that they were scarcely known to those that were immedi-
ately concerned in the Judging of or Pleading by them." He asserted fur-
ther that the work had been encouraged by the Assembly, and in the face
of his two distinct declarations of this fact, one must conclude that Bacon
was mistaken when in later years he said that this edition of the Maryland
laws had been published without authority.

Because of the difficulty, experienced often throughout their history, of
securing the Proprietary or Royal assent to legislative en ac tmen ts, the people
of Maryland until this time had preferred temporary laws, expiring by their
own limitation, so that their legislation, McMahon says, had "assumed the
character of a system of expedients." The body of laws adopted in 1715,
and now published by Jones in 1718 with all legislation of the intervening
years, was the earliest body of permanent general law established in the
Province. The service which Jones rendered to the people of Maryland in
editing and publishing their first "code" was of such a degree of importance
as to entitle him to remembrance. Whether the country party was pleased
by his prefatorial reference to those of the Court, and whether the sop which
he threw to the former in his remark on the force of the English statutes in
Maryland was to the taste of the latter did not, after all, affect the practi-
cal value of the printed body of general law which he published for the
benefit of all parties in the Province.

THE SESSION LAWS OF 1719

Following his venture as the publisher of the compiled laws of the Prov-
ince in the year 1718, Jones made application at the next session of Assem-
bly for permission to continue his activity in the publication of its legislative
enactments. On June 5, 1719, leave was given him by the Lower House "to
print the laws made this Sessions—As also the Governours Speech Answer
and the Severall addresses of this Sessions."¹ Jones again carried his "copy"
to Philadelphia,² and the session laws for 1719, and the speeches and ad-
dresses for that year soon issued from the Bradford press.³ From the cir-

¹L. H. J., June 5, 1719, Archives of Maryland, 33:444 and 445.

² It is regretted that the limits of this work do not permit an extended account of Andrew Bradford, the Phil-
adelphia printer who at various times during the ensuing years acted in the capacity, unofficially of course, of
public printer of Maryland. A prolific printer and a useful citizen, he is shown in an unfavorable light in the
Autobiography of Franklin, who seems in this case to have acted with ingratitude toward one who had befriended
him at a time of great need. Isaiah Thomas has a good account of the Bradfords, and other later writers have
defended Andrew against the aspersions of Franklin and set him before the world in a more favorable light as
man and printer.

³ See bibliographical appendix.

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