Introduction. xxxix

passed defining the scope of the appropriations to be made under it. The num-
ber of men to be levied was fixed in this bill at four hundred. An assessment
upon estates and incomes was voted as the method of taxation, and the amount
to be raised fixed at £40,000. It was passed by the Lower House on April 25
by a vote of 23 to 13, and rejected after one reading in the Upper House (pp.
445-449, 461, 463, 420). This marked the eighth rejection of the Assessment
bill. No copy of the bill is known to exist. It was probably almost identical
with that passed at recent sessions, except as to the amount appropriated and
the number of men to be levied, although there is reason to believe that in ad-
dition it may have contained an allowance for a provincial agent in Great
Britain, apparently not included in former Supply bills (Arch. Md. IX, 519).

The two houses also split on the adoption of a joint address of condolence
to the new king George III upon the death of his grandfather and predecessor
George II, and of congratulation upon his own accession to the throne. The
Lower House insisted upon the inclusion in the address of a paragraph pray-
ing the King to allow the people of Maryland to maintain an agent in Great
Britain through whom they might lay their grievances directly before him. This
was of course violently opposed by the Upper House. Separate addresses of
condolence and congratulation were then drawn up by each house, although
there is reason to believe that the address of the Lower House never actually
reached the King. This story is told more fully elsewhere in this introduction
(pp. ix-lxii). A bill was also introduced in the Lower House at this
session for the support of an agent in Great Britain (p. 473), but does
not seem to have been pressed for passage, possibly because it was known
that rejection was inevitable in the Upper House, and it was hoped that a
direct appeal to the Crown might bring about the desired result in another way.

The embezzlement of over £2,000 of public funds by Henry Darnall, Naval
Officer of the Patuxent District and a former Attorney-General, was dis-
covered during this session by a joint committee of the two houses appointed to
examine the accounts of the Loan Office. Darnall, a member of the very promi-
nent Roman Catholic family of that name, of the "Woodyard", Prince George's
County, and closely related to the Carrolls, promptly absconded, and his brother
John Darnall and Charles Carroll of Annapolis (father of Charles Carroll of
Carrollton), sureties on his bond, immediately paid over to the trustees of the
Loan Office £1,000, the amount of their joint bond, which was about half
the sum embezzled. This episode gave an opportunity for an anti-Catholic
outbreak in the Lower House, because Darnall, unquestionably always a
Catholic at heart, had outwardly conformed to the Established Church in
order to hold public office. Sharpe had been asked in 1755 to remove him as
Attorney-General on religious grounds, but had refused to do so (Arch. Md.
LII, 159-160). This sensational scandal is treated fully in a later section
(pp. iv-lviii).

At this session there was made the first thorough examination of the ac-
counts of the Loan Office that had been made during the life of this Assembly.

Repeated attempts by the joint committee of the two houses to audit these
accounts had been prevented by the prolonged illness of Richard Dorsey, the