1856.] OF THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES           261

The Committee could do nothing but give general instructions
to the Librarian and see that such instructions were faithfully
carried out, and that the discretion entrusted to him was exer-
cised for the public service, and not abused to any unlawful pur-
pose. Accordingly between the Messrs. Johnson, booksellers of
Philadelphia, and the State Librarian there has been for many
years an arrangement that the Librarian should furnish to those
booksellers as they required them, such of our reports as we could
spare at the price of five dollars per volume, the State of Mary-
land taking in return other works at current prices. These and
other surplus volumes have also been disposed of to other per-
sons, always, at the price for the Reports of five dollars per vol-
ume. There is not in the Library, within my knowledge, per-
haps there never has been any express written authority for these
transactions. But I think the General Assembly will agree with
me, that considering together the resolution of 1832, and the
practice of the Library, and looking at the fact of the annual or
biennial visitation of the Library by the Committee for a period of
twenty odd years; when there is not to be found anywhere, one
word, not one line or syllable in any law, journal or public docu-
ment in condemnation of the practice; that a man who could be-
lieve it has existed without the sanction of law in the continuous
approbation of the Library Committees, would be fit for no place
outside the walls if a Lunatic Asylum. The works added to the
State Library within the last three years by exchange of surplus
volumes, if they had been paid for in money would have cost the
State Treasury near two thousand dollars. Of the surplus vol-
umes which have been exchanged for them; I think at fair prices,
there were upon the shelves of the Library fifty or a hundred in
a few cases perhaps three or four hundred copies. These volumes
lie upon the shelves from year to year, and perhaps would lie from
century to century untouched, but by the worm, or the slowly-
consuming ravages of time. The State purchased one hundred
and ninety copies of each volume of the Maryland chancery de-
cisions. The act of 1852 directs the distribution of about one
hundred copies to different officers. The present Librarian thinks
he has faithfully distributed according to law the volumes which
came to his hands. The eight copies designated for the use of
the General Assembly have not been given out of the Library.
Supposing my predecessors also to have carried out the law there
ought to have been in the Library after this distribution directed
by the act of 1852, ninety copies of each volume. If there has
been in any cases an accidental neglect to distribute any of these
volumes, the number not distributed ought to be in the Library
additional to the ninety volumes. The present Librarian has dis-
posed of eleven copies of the first volume and there are now about
eighty, I think eighty-one copies of that volume in the Library.
He has disposed of sixteen copies of the second volume and