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MEMORIAL OF JOHN STEWART, 1757
MEMORIAL OF JOHN STEWART, MERCHANT OF LONDON,
DATED MAY 4, 1757 REQUESTING THAT HE BE REIMBURSED
FOR THE IMPORT DUTIES PAID BY HIM ON CONVICTS TRANS-
PORTED INTO MARYLAND, WHICH DUTY WAS PAID UNDER
THE ACT OF THE ASSEMBLY OF 1754; TOGETHER WITH AN
OPINION FROM WILLIAM MURRAY, FORMERLY THE KING'S
ATTORNEY-GENERAL AND NOW LORD MANSFIELD, THAT
THIS DUTY WAS IMPOSED CONTRARY TO THE LAWS OF
ENGLAND.
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MSS.
Calvert
Papers
No. 583
Md.Hist.Soc.
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To The Right Honourable The Lord Baltimore Proprietor of His
Majesty's Colony of Maryland.
The humble Memorial of John Stewart Merchant of London.
Sheweth
That about the Year 1754 the Assembly of that Colony passed a
Law imposing a Duty of 20.s p Head on all Servants imported
there; — Under the Authority of which Law the Naval Officers
there have exacted and received of Your Memorialist's Agents the
Sum of 20.S p Head for Convicts transported to that Place in
Obedience to Your Memorialist's Contracts with His Majesty and
his Courts of Justice in this Kingdom.
When Your Memorialist first received Advice of such Law, Your
Memorialist apprehensive of its Consequences directed His Majesty's
Attorney General's Opinion to be taken as a Rule for his Conduct.
Such Opinion with the Case Your Memorialist now presumes
thus to lay before Your Lordship,
4th Geo : 1 . l. 1 1 . This Statute, for the more effectual Trans-
portation of Felons,
" After Reciting that it had been found by Experience that the
" Punishments inflicted by the Laws against the Officers therein
" enumerated had not proved effectual to deter persons from being
" Guilty of those Crimes: And that many Persons to whom Royal
" Mercy had been extended upon Condition of Transporting them-
" selves to the West Indies, had often neglected to perform that
" Condition; And that in many of His Majesty's Colonies and Plan-
" tations in America, there was great Want of Servants, who by
" their Labour and Industry might be the Means of improving and
" making the said Colonies and Plantations more useful to this
" Nation :
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