THE MARYLAND PATRONAGE 13

Settlement of the province, insofar as it increased the amount of
legal business, the expenses of government, and the production
and consumption of commodities, augmented the revenues of all
those officials paid in fees, in commissions, or from the proceeds
of customs duties. ⁴;

As the increase was not, however, uniform within the colony,
some local officers gained by it more than others. At the beginning
of the eighteenth century the southern counties of the Western
Shore, those earliest settled, had begun to suffer from soil deple-
tion and to lose population to fresh northern and western counties.
The clerks', sheriffs', and deputy surveyors' offices in St. Mary's,
Calvert, and Charles Counties ceased t6 appreciate and then de-
clined in value; those of Baltimore, Prince George's, Cecil, and
Frederick Counties grew more lucrative.

Similarly, officers in the proprietary establishment, whose in-
comes were incident to the taking up of vacant lands, were
affected by conditions on the frontier. When in 1755 Braddock's
defeat ended the purchase of wild lands in Frederick County, and
ensuing Indian raids drove out the settlers (who ceased to pay
their quit-rents), Lord Baltimore's income fell hundreds of
pounds, and his officers suffered corresponding losses.

The condition of commerce, four times impeded by war, was
particularly important to the Governor, whose income arose chiefly
from port duties; to the Treasurers, who had commissions on the
provincial duties they received; and to the Collectors and Naval
Officers, who took commissions on the duties and had fees for
entering and clearing vessels. As many of these duties were on
tobacco, revenues were further affected by the extent of planting
in the province. The spread of tobacco culture in the seventeenth
and early eighteenth centuries increased the produce of tobacco
duties and of the commissions on them. A very general abandon-
ment of tobacco for wheat over large areas after 1730 had the
reverse effect.

Moreover, as most officers were paid wholly or partly in tobacco,

but the Upper House never permitted them to do so (cf. Archives, L, 483; LV
676, 727-28; LVI, 280). Those taxes proposed in 1695 and 1754 give some
idea of the relative values of offices (Ibid,, XXXVIII, 50; L, 483).

⁴ Maryland seems to have had a population of just under 35, 000 in 1704-
80, 000 in 1719; 153, 505 in 1755; and from 220, 000 to 250, 000 in 1775 (cf. C. A.
Barker, The Background of the Revolution in Maryland [New Haven, 19401 3),
Much of this increase was due to a high birth rate.