xvi Letter of Transmittal.

speaker without rising from their seats, and three, four, and five at a time with-
out being checked. When a motion was made, the speaker instead of putting
the question in the usual form, only asked the gentlemen whether they chose
that such or such a thing be done, and was answered by a yes sir, or no sir:
and tho' the voices appeared frequently to be divided, they never would go to
the trouble of dividing the house, but the clerk entered the resolutions, I sup-
posed, as he thought proper. In short everything seems to be carried without
the house in general's knowing what was proposed."

It would appear from Jefferson's account that the disorder which still marks
the closing days of a legislative session of the House of Delegates of Maryland
has a tradition of at least some two centuries behind it. Oversensitive Mary-
landers will perhaps be not a little shocked by his description of that Eastern
Shore aristocrat Speaker Robert Lloyd of "Hope", Queen Anne's County, as
"the figure of a little old man dressed but indifferently with a yellow queiiie
wig on ... and with very little the air of a speaker". It also seems fair to
assume that the reader of the bill "with a schoolboy tone and an abrupt pause
at every half dozen words" was Turbutt Wright, Clerk of the house.

Another figure of much greater importance in colonial public affairs than
the then comparatively unknown Jefferson, also crossed the scene of Mary-
land politics at this period. This was Benjamin Franklin. A war of pamphlet-
eers was waged in the years 1764 and 1765 between the popular party and
the Upper House which voiced the Proprietary interests. An especially violent
attack upon the Proprietary government of Maryland was made in 1764 in a
pamphlet Remarks upon a Message, written by an anonymous author, or
authors, and without indication as to where it was printed. Proof has recently
come to light showing that this was printed by the firm of Franklin & Hall
of Philadelphia, and there is some reason to believe that Franklin himself may
have had a hand in its writing. He was then the leader in the movement to
have the Crown put an end to the Proprietary government of the Penns in
Pennsylvania, and it was obviously to his interest to discredit this anachronistic
form of government in an adjoining province.

There will be found discussed in the Introduction the more important matters
which came before the General Assembly and the laws which were passed
during the period covered by this volume. These are listed in the Table of
Contents. The source material used in the preparation of the volume is identical
with that which has been described in the Letter of Transmittal of Volume LIX
of the Archives, to which the interested reader is referred. As has been cus-
tomary in preceding volumes of the Assembly series when messages and ad-
dresses are recorded in the journals of both houses, they are printed, if short,
in the proceedings of both houses, but if long, they are printed in full in the