ARCHIVES OF MARYLAND ACTS OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF MARYLAND HITHERTO UNPRINTED 1694-1729 し PUBLISHED BY AUTHORITY OF THE STATE UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE ROOMS OF THE MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY, BALTIMORE, November 1, 1918. To the Maryland Historical Society: GENTLEMEN: We have the honor to submit the Thirty-eighth Volume of the Archives of Maryland, consisting of Acts of the General Assembly of the Province from 1694 to 1698 and from 1711 to 1729, hitherto unprinted. We have still on hand a large amount of material which should be printed in the Archives. When the series was begun in 1883, five subdivisions were contemplated. Two of them, namely, the Correspondence of Governor Sharpe, and the Proceedings of the Provincial Council, have been completed. Two more, the Proceedings of the State Council, and the Proceedings of the Provincial Court, were suspended when the printing reached the years 1780 and 1657 respectively, in order that the fifth, namely, the Proceedings and Acts of the General Assembly of the Province of Maryland, might be completed. The publication of the Proceedings, with this volume, has been completed to the year 1732. The unprinted Acts, included in this volume, are of two periods. Those of the period 1711-1729 were found in the office of the Clerk of the Court of Appeals, at Annapolis, as is told in the preface of Vol. 37. Those of the period 1694-1698 were copied from the duplicates sent to the Public Record Office, in London, while Maryland was a Royal Province. For the forty-four years between 1732 and 1776, at least fifteen volumes will be necessary to complete the series. During this period, it must be remembered, the Private Acts and the Proceedings of the Upper House of Assembly have never been printed in any form. The Public Acts, and the Proceedings of the Lower House were printed contemporaneously with the session, but the pamphlets containing these Proceedings and Acts are extremely rare. Some time ago, the Committee addressed a circular letter to seventeen of the most important reference libraries of the United States and England, and found that none of them had anything like a complete collection, either of the Laws or of the Proceedings of the Lower House. We were urged by such libraries as those of New York State, Harvard University, The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, the New York Public Library, and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, to complete the publication for the whole of the Provincial period. The librarian of the John Carter Brown Library of Providence wrote: "I have sincere hope that it may be possible for you to continue the series of the Maryland Archives, for the whole of the Colonial period, which have already added so materially to our appreciation of the part that Maryland played in the events of our Colonial epoch." The Librarian of Congress wrote: "As to the desirability of continuing" the publication of the Proceedings and Acts to 1776, "our inability, by repeated effort, during the last six years, to obtain, by purchase or by gift, the volumes that we lack, indicates the great advantage, in our opinion, and considering the interest to this library, of the continuing of your series." In a recent letter, Professor Charles M. Andrews, of Yale University, writes: "Maryland stands with her sister states as one that has done a great work in issuing the materials for her history in a form not only dignified in itself, but also of great and permanent merit as an aid to the student of our Colonial history. To give up the series would be from the standpoint of such student little short of a calamity. . . . . The Maryland Archives should be continued unbroken down to the close of the Provincial period. Their value and usefulness need no defense." Dr. J. Franklin Jameson, director of the Department of Historical Research in the Carnegie Institution of Washington and editor of the American Historical Review, after "expressing in the warmest terms my hope that the publication will be continued to the end of the Colonial period," continues thus: “I am also very decidedly of the opinion that the importance and value of the Assembly Journals increase as the Colonial period goes on. I dare say that the contrary may be the usual impression, for we all have special interest in origins, and thus in the beginnings of Colonial institutions. But Colonial assemblies increased in power and importance during the Colonial period, so that these records have constantly a higher place among the historian's material. Also, in most colonies the period from 1730 to 1765, and in some respects even to 1775, is much less well known than the preceding periods. Of course I know little of the actual contents, in detail, of the Proceedings after 1730, never having consulted personally either the manuscript or the rare printed volumes; but I cannot help supposing that what is true of the Virginia House of Burgesses is true of the Maryland Assembly. Now Virginian history from 1730 to 1775 is absolutely remade (or will have to be) by the publication of the Journals of the House of Burgesses. They constitute a mass of material greater, in amount and value combined, than all the rest of the printed materials for Virginian history in that period put together. Archives of Maryland. "Of course these things cost money, but if the Maryland authorities are duly alive to the importance of Maryland history as a support of Maryland public spirit, they will not hesitate to continue the Maryland Archives with the same liberality with which they have maintained it from the beginning (I was teaching at The Johns Hopkins then, and saw that beginning) and, in my judgment, will give a prominent place, perhaps the foremost place in that endeavor, to the completion of the Proceedings and Acts of the Provincial Assembly." After the completion of the Proceedings and Acts, the publication of the State Council Proceedings will probably require three or four volumes. The Committee will then be able to determine upon the publication of so much of the Proceedings of the Provincial Court as may seem wise. A portion of those Proceedings clearly should be put into print, though it may be that certain portions will be found not of sufficient interest and usefulness to justify printing them. Respectfully, SAMUEL K. DENNIS, JOHN M. VINCENT, Committee on Publication. |