The Lower House. 465

Province and the Office of Keeper of your Majesty's Great
Seal of this Province being in one individual Person consist
not with the good Government thereof for thereby it comes to
pass that when an Appeal is granted before the Governor and
Council after a Decree in Chancery that the same individual
Person which gave the Decree is also Judge in the Appeal, of
the bad Consequence whereof your Majesty's Subjects here
being very sensible, in most humble Manner implore your
Majesty of your Grace and Clemency to provide a proper
Remedy.
Signed p the Honble Council and House of Delegates.
W. Taylard Cl. Ho. Del.

To the Queen's Most Excellent Majesty
The humble Address of your Majesty's dutiful and loyal
Subjects the Delegates and Representatives of the several and
respective Counties of your Majesty's Province of Maryland
now sitting in a General Assembly ;

Sheweth to your Majesty That his Excellency John Sey-
mour Esq. our late Governor hath given us to understand
your Majesty's Dissassent to two Laws lately passed here, one
about the Gauge of Tobacco Hogsheads the other against
cropping and defacing the same, which we believe your
Majesty would not have denied your Royal Assent to if any
had appeared for us to have made your Majesty sensible of
the Reasonableness of the said Laws And first we humbly beg
Leave to lay before your Majesty the true State of the Trade
of this Province, and so it is that the Merchants living at Lon-
don most usually during the Wars adventure little on their own
Account most great Ships coming chiefly on Freight to which
the Merchants and Owners have great Encouragement by the
Artifices of raising it to an extravagant Rate that the Tobacco
that loads and employs so many large and defensible Ships
pays such vast Sums to your Majesty and purchases such
Abundance of the Goods and Manufactures of Great Britian
is chiefly the proper Tobacco of the Planters Merchants and
Inhabitants of this Province and at their proper Risque and
Hazard sent to London, and tho' it produces little to us the
Merchants who acts as our Factors thereby with little Hazard
most certainly gather vast [sums] by their Commissions and

L. H. J.

Lib. 41.

other Perquisites which they make and by laying Obligations on
the Masters of such Ships to take no Tobacco on Freight but
from such who will consign to the Employers of such Masters
especially when they have so much Advantage by Plenty of
Freighters as to force it; thereby engrossing all the Consign-
ments they can to themselves and frustrating the publick and

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p. 258