A History of Printing in Colonial Maryland

and for their children the rights of Englishmen. In the sessions of 1724 and
1725, anxious to put themselves on record before their constituents in this
matter, and at the same time to expose the obduracy of the Proprietary
and the Upper House, the burgesses determined upon the printing of such
of their recent proceedings as related to the contention which had been en-
gaging their interest. The resulting collection was the earliest printed record
of which copies have remained of the proceedings and procedure of the
Maryland Assembly, but before passing to a consideration of this pamphlet,
it is necessary to take account of an earlier publication of the same charac-
ter which has never engaged the attention of bibliographers.

On October 13, 1724, the following entry was made on the journal of the
Lower House:

"Several printed Copys of the Address and the Resolves of the Lower House in October
Assembly 1722 being produced to this house are well approved of in the manner as they
are now printed."¹

No copy of this initial issue of the Maryland Assembly proceedings has
ever been recorded. Its printing had not been ordered by the Assembly of
1722, in which year it might conceivably have been printed by Michael
Piper. No mention was made of it in the Assembly of 1723, and from the
expression used in 1724, "the manner as they are now printed," one ac-
quires the impression that the publication had newly issued from the press.
Bladen's old press, presumably, having been sent to Philadelphia, there
was no printing press in Annapolis in 1724, so that in seeking the place of
origin of the first printed proceedings of the Maryland Assembly, one turns
naturally to the office of that busy Philadelphia printer, Andrew Bradford,
whose relations with the Province had continued to be close. It is notlisted,
however, with the issues of his press, nor is it recorded elsewhere in Ameri-
can bibliographies.

One passes wi th relief from this ghost book, the "Address and Resolves of
the Lower House of Assembly of Maryland in the Session of October 1722,"
to the well known but rare work of a similar character which Bradford
printed for Thomas Bordley, Esq., in the year 1725. In the October session
of 1724, three days before the occurrence which has been spoken of in the
foregoing sentences, the delegates in the resolution cited below had pro-
vided for the publication of such of their proceedings as had to do with the
English statutes in Maryland and related constitutional matters. "It be-
ing proposed," the journal records,

"that for the more effectually publishing the Resolves and the Address relating to the

¹L. H. J., October 13, 1704, Archives of Maryland, 35:102,

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