ARCHIVIST OF THE HALL OF RECORDS 51

Act which comes into your official possession. This being true,
and the prime object to be accomplished by this Section being
to provide a means for certifying authentic copies of public
records, it is our opinion that you may compare the third-
reader copy presented by the applicant for certification against
the original Act and, if it is an exact copy thereof, you may
certify directly to the applicant's copy of such third-reader.

Very truly yours,

C. FERDINAND SYBERT
Attorney General
ROBERT C. MURPHY
Spec. Asst. Attorney General

CFS:MH

RCM

ACTS OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY

The members of the Hall of Records Commission will recall that
at the session of the General Assembly held in 1958 a bill was intro-
duced to transfer responsibility for the Maryland Manual from the
office of the Secretary of State to the Hall of Records Commission.
This bill, as I reported to you last year, failed on third reading in the
House of Delegates after having passed the Senate. The members of
the Commission are aware that the Manual has been prepared by the
Hall of Records staff since 1947 by request of the Governor, but that
the time for its appearance had never been fixed and there was always
so much uncertainty about the wishes of succeeding Secretaries of State
that we found it difficult to plan our program from year to year. We
wished above all to have this certainty. And we wanted also to be
able to deal directly with the printer, which would be possible only
if the funds for the Manual were in our budget. With the cooperation
of the present Secretary of State, the Honorable Thomas B. Finan, a
bill satisfactory to both agencies was prepared and subsequently passed
by the General Assembly of 1959. It will be noted that the Secretary
of State retains the right to "issue" the Manual, otherwise it is now
our responsibility. The Act follows:

CHAPTER 506

(House Bill 822)

AN ACT to repeal and re-enact, with amendments, Section 104
of Article 41 of the Annotated Code of Maryland (1957
Edition), title "Governor—Executive and Administrative
Departments", sub-title "State Manual", amending the
laws concerning the compilation, editing and printing of
the State Manual.