Maryland Laws Printed in Philadelphia and London

phon it is not possible to assert positively that it was from Bradford's press.
The type and typographical ornaments, however, aid in making an attri-
bution which one would suspect to be correct from the fact that Evan Jones,
who always carried his work to Philadelphia, had been authorized to act as
the Provincial printing agent in this session of Assembly. It is likely that
the single tobacco law of the session was printed at the same time and by
the same printer.

Five years after the publication of the Jones-Bradford collection of 1718,
the Maryland Assembly was called on to consider "The Petition of Andrew
Bradford printer praying an Allowance for printing the great Body of Laws
which he was Employd to do by Evan Jones Gent deced."¹ After a reading,
the petition was immediately "rejected for that this House never Employed
the petitioner or Ordered any other person to Employ him." Thus we learn
that Jones is dead, and that Bradford either had not been paid at all for his
work on the laws, or that he considered himself to have been underpaid.
The delegates, on their part, clearly considered Mr. Bradford impertinent,
but that the Philadelphia printer bore no malice is evidenced by his willing-
ness to undertake Maryland work at other times in the not distant future.

THE BOARD OF TRADE EDITION OF MARYLAND LAWS, LONDON, 1723

In connection with the edition of Maryland laws which Bradford prin ted
for Jones in 1718, it is proper to mention now rather than in its chronologi-
cal order a compilation of Maryland statutes which appeared in London in
the year 1723, for this later compilation, in spite of its date, contains no
acts subsequent to the body of law established in 1715, the same revision
of Maryland legislation which had made necessary the Jones-Bradford edi-
tion. When the Queen had ordered a revision of Maryland laws in 1715, she
had directed at the same time that the body of law when completed should
be engrossed and a copy sent to the Lords Commissioners of Trade. In a
footnote to his Preface, Bacon wrote in 1765,

"I have seen (some Time before I left England in the Year 1745) an Edition printed at
London, at Lord Baltimore's expence, as I have been informed, for the Use of the Board of
Trade, with the Latin Charter prefixed: But could never meet with a copy of it in this
Province, nor can I recollect the Date it bears."

In this note Bacon referred doubtless to the edition of 1723 which is now
being discussed, a work well known to students of American bibliography
and available in several libraries in this country, however vainly he may
have sought it in his day. In spite of his supposition that the compilation

¹L. H. J., September 30, 1723, Archives of Maryland, 34: 617.

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