1809.

NOVEMBER. LAWS OF MARYLAND.

CHAP.
CXXXVIII

L. AND BE IT ENACTED, That all male criminals, who, before the commencement of this act,
shall have been condemned to serve and labour on the public roads of Baltimore county, or in making,
repairing or cleaning, the streets or basin of Baltimore-town, and whose time of service and labour
is unexpired, shall, at the court of oyer and terminer and gaol delivery for Baltimore county, next
immediately after issuing the said proclamation, be brought into the said court by the superintendent
of the criminals, and may openly pray the court to commute the judgment severally pronounced
against them to a confinement in the said penitentiary, according to the directions in this act con-
tained, during the residue of the time for which such convict shall have been condemned to serve
ond labour, and upon such prayer being entered on record, the said court shall pronounce such com-
mutation, and the same shall be recorded, and the prisoner shall then be sent to the penitentiary,
and there detained for the residue of the time for which they were respectively condemned.

LL AND BE IT ENACTED, That if any person shall hereafter be convicted of any crime com-
mitted before the passing of this act, he or she shall be sentenced to undergo such pains and punish-
ment as by the laws now in force are prescribed and directed, unless such convict shall openly pray
the court, before whom such offender shall be tried, that sentence may be pronounced agreeably to
the provisions of this act for the like offence, in which case the said court shall comply with the said
prayer, and pass such sentence on such convict as they would have passed had the said offence been
committed subsequent to the passing of this act.

CHAP. CXXXIX.

Passed 6th of
Jan. 1810.

An ACT to confirm an Act, entitled, An Act to incorporate certain
Persons in every Christian Church or Congregation in this State.

WHEREAS the general assembly of Maryland at November session, eighteen hundred and two,
taking into consideration the number of petitions from different religious societies in this
state for acts of incorporation,. and intending to place them all on the same equal footing, by enact-
ing a general law, whereby every Christian society might obtain for itself all the rights and benefits
of an incorporation, by proceeding according to the provisions therein prescribed, but the said act
wanting the words " by the General Assembly of Maryland, " in the enacting style for all laws, pre-
scribed by the constitution of this state, the validity thereof may be questioned, and several reli-
gious societies of different denominations throughout this state may be thus deprived of the rights,
property and advantages, intended to be secured to them by the legislature; for remedy thereof,

II. BE IT ENACTED, by the General Assembly of Maryland, That the aforesaid act, entitled, An act
to incorporate certain persons in every Christian church or congregation in this state, shall be and
the same is hereby confirmed, and the said act is hereby declared as a law of this state, to be as bind-
ing and available as if the same, and every provision thereof, was herein formally and specially re-
cited and re-enacted.

III. AND BE IT ENACTED, That all and every incorporation intended to be formed, with all and
every right, immunities, title and interest, belonging or incident thereto, and all proceedings held
in pursuance of, or by virtue of, the powers and authority meant to be granted by the said act, shall
be and the same are hereby fully confirmed, and declared to be as good and available both in law and
in equity, as the same would, could or might have been, if the style of the enacting words aforesaid
was complete, and the entire form thereof had been originally and properly inserted in the act afore-
said, of which this is confirmatory.

CHAP. CXL.

Passed 6th of
Jan. 1810.

An ACT to lay out and make public a Road in Prince-George's Coun-
ty and part of Anne-Arundel County.

BE IT ENACTED, by the General Assembly of Maryland, That Nicholas Snowden, Thomas Richard-
son, Archibald Edmonston, Thomas Griffith and John Crow, or any three of them, be and they
are hereby authorised and empowered to review the private road now leading from captain Thomas
Richardson's, in Prince-George's county, by the mill of John Chew Thomas, on Patuxent river, un-
til it intersects the post-road from Baltimore to Washington about one mile from the said mill, and
to survey, mark and bound, the same, not exceeding one perch and one half perch in width, which
said road shall be laid out and opened, the expense whereof, and all damages sustained thereby, shall
be paid by the parties interested in the same; and the said road, when opened and made as aforesaid,
•hall be deemed and considered a public highway for ever, and as such shall be kept in repair in the
same manner that other public roads in Prince-George's and Anne-Arundel counties respectively are.