Ixx Introduction.

the Proprietary, and had prevented the passage, over a period of six years,
of the nine-times rejected Supply or Assessment Bill, carrying an appropria-
tion for the support of Maryland militia during the Seven Years' War. The
editor of the Archives regrets that conditions in England in recent years have
been such that it was impossible to secure an exact copy of the original "Queries"
as they appeared in the London Public Ledger; in fact the only file of this
paper known to him to have been preserved is said to have been destroyed
in London in 1940 by enemy action. There is no reason to believe, however,
that these "Queries" as they appear in the old manuscript to be next cited, and
as they are quoted in subsequent replies to them to be discussed later, differ in
any respect from the form in which they originally appeared in that newspaper.
The old undated manuscript in the State Archives in the Hall of Records, An-
napolis, which is reproduced in the Appendix (IV) under the title: "Brief
Answers to Queries in the London Public Ledger of March 17th, 1763" (pp.
367-372), was obviously written in the 1763-1764 period for (or possibly
by) some important representative of the Proprietary Government, doubtless
Cecelius Calvert. Written in a clerk's hand, no definite clue as to its author-
ship is afforded by the handwriting. These "Brief Answers" are a slightly
altered version of the answers to the Public Ledger "Queries" as they appear
in An Answer to the Queries on the Proprietary Government of Maryland
(etc.), which appeared anonymously in 1764 in pamphlet form and is dis-
cussed in a later paragraph (pp. lxxi-lxiii); but, unlike the pamphlet, the
"Brief Answers" do not include the queries to which they are the answers. A
significant difference is the omission in the manuscript "Brief Answers" of
any answer to query 9, which is a covert attack upon Cecilius Calvert personally
and upon his religious affiliations, insinuations which are indignantly answered
at length in the pamphlet (pp. 415-416).

V. A few months after the appearance of the "Queries" in the Public
Ledger there was published anonymously, early in 1764, a pamphlet by "A
Friend to Maryland", with the title Remarks upon a Message sent by the Upper
House of Assembly of Maryland 1762, printed in the year 1764 (pp. 372-408).
This pamphlet of some seventy-one pages, from a pen as hostile to the Pro-
prietary government as was the author of the "Queries", took the Upper House,
the Governor, and the Proprietary severely to task for a message sent by the
Upper to the Lower House on the last day of the March-April, 1762, session,
too late for the latter house to reply, which had violently attacked the lower
chamber for having again passed a Supply Bill not to the liking of the Upper
House. This rather intemperate message is known to have been written by
Stephen Bordley, the Attorney-General. The pamphlet, which for brevity will
be called the "Remarks", defended the Lower House at great length and with
considerable ability. There are good reasons for believing that it came from
the press of Franklin & Hall in Philadelphia, and that Benjamin Franklin played
a considerable part in its preparation, although it seems most unlikely that he
personally wrote it in the entirety. It is to be noted that the Proprietary, as he
is invariably called in Maryland writings of this period, appears in the "Re-
marks" as the Proprietor.