vi Letter of Transmission.

as the father of painting in the Colonies, an elaborate altar piece of the Last
Supper—with thirteen figures—Christ, and the twelve disciples—should have
been commissioned to be drawn by a resident artist for a public building,
surely marks an epoch to receive more than passing consideration." Hesselius
returned to Philadelphia in 1735, and died there. When St. Barnabas' Church
was repaired many years afterwards, the painting was removed, and was long
thought to be lost, but about eight years ago, the editor saw in the possession
of Mrs. Gassaway of Rockville, a painting, corresponding to the missing one,
which her father had bought at Georgetown, D. C., about the middle of the
Nineteenth Century. Mr. Hart afterwards viewed the painting, and pronounced
the opinion that it was the one which had formerly adorned St. Barnabas'
Church.

Additional information as to " Old Masters in Virginia and Maryland "
will be found in Miss Kate Mason Rowland's articles in 1 Oracle 55 & 142,
and in F. B. Mayer's " Historic Portraits in Maryland," in I Maryland
Historical Magazine, 330.

In his address delivered to the General Assembly, on March 13, 1732/3,
the Lord Proprietary referred to the " bad State of our Trade." In connection
with this, the rumor, reported in the Gentleman's Magazine for June, 1732,
is of interest, that the planters had destroyed 70 tobacco plantations in Maryland,
and were resolved not to leave a plant of tobacco standing in the country,
saying that it was not worth sending to England, whereupon the Governor
had assembled the militia to stop them.

The early hours of the Assembly's sessions show us the survival of old
customs, in the English Parliament, for Clarendon writes, in the History of
the Great Rebellion (I, p. 187), that the House of Commons "met always at
8 of the clock and rose at 12, which were the old Parliament hours, that the
Committees, upon whom the greatest burden of business lay, might have the
afternoons for their preparation and dispatch."

As this session was not the first one of the Assembly, no committees were
appointed. In Dr. J. F. Jameson's article in the Political Science Quarterly
(IX, p. 247), upon the "Origin of the Standing Committee System in
American Legislative Bodies," (at pages 262 and 264), he discusses the
Committees of the Provincial Lower House, finding that " the system of
standing committees, borrowed from England, was developed in the colonial
assemblies of the middle and southern colonies, but earliest in Virginia and
Maryland." He traces the beginning of the Committees in the Province to
the Session of 1678, and notes that the Maryland plan differed from the
Virginia one, in that the committees were reconstructed at each session in
Virginia, while they continued throughout an entire Assembly in Maryland.