accounts to be raised, entered, and made up, of the expenditure, loan, or other disposition of all publick moneys, by or under the authority of Convention, examine, audit, and adjust all accounts and sums of money due from or to this Colony, in the recess of Convention, and the same transmit, with the respective balances struck, to the Council of Safety for the time being, subject to their examination and control, and in order to be by them paid and discharged.

Resolved, That Mr. Thomas Contee be added to the above Board, and that they, or any two of them, be empowered and authorized to act.

On reading a Memorial from Dr. Charles Alexander Warfield, of Anne Arundel County, for a sum of Money to be advanced him for the purpose of carrying on a Crude Nitre Manufactory,

Resolved, That the same be referred to the consideration of the Council of Safety, and that they contract with him and advance the Money if they think proper.

This Convention, taking into consideration the Resolves of the Convention of Virginia of the 31st day of May last, relative to the Proceedings of this Convention in May respecting the case of Governour Eden, came to the following Resolutions:

Resolved, That this Convention cannot but be of opinioa that the said Resolution of the Convention of Virginia were not only hasty, and made without due and proper reflection, but betray a disposition to interfere in the affairs of this Colony, and that that Resolution might have proved highly injurious to the general interest of America, by infusing groundless jealousies and effecting fatal divisions.

That this Convention never intermeddled, nor was disposed to interfere with the affairs of Virginia, but hath at all times shown a due and proper respect to the Convention of that Colony, and on all occasions must have evinced their sincere and tender regard for the people thereof; and this Convention cannot be of opinion that the Convention of Virginia could believe that this Convention promoted Governour Eden’s passage “to assist in their destruction under a pretence of his retiring to England.”

That this Convention, and the Council of Safety for the time being, were the only proper and adequate judges of the propriety and expediency of suffering Governour Eden to depart out of this Province, and have proceeded in that matter upon evidence which was satisfactory to themselves, and to which the Convention of Virginia were strangers.

That had the Convention of Virginia been in possession of the evidence upon which the Council of Safety and this Convention proceeded, they could not have been at a loss to account for the Council of Safety their declining to seize Governour Eden, or for the Convention having promoted his passage (not, as is unjustly insinuated in the Resolution of the Virginia Convention, to assist in their destruction, but really) to England, whither this Convention hath the best grounds to believe he would go by the first opportunity. Nor can the address alluded to in the said Resolution of the Convention of Virginia, in the opinion of this Convention, be considered as enabling, nor was it meant to enable, Governour Eden to assume the character of a publick agent, nor can this Convention discover how the said Governour would thereby be enabled to promote divisions and disunion amongst the Colonies; but the same was presented as a testimony due to the Governour of the sense this Convention entertained of his fair and impartial representations of the principles, motives, and views of the people of this Colony, so far as the same had come to their knowledge.

That although this Convention was sensible that in the absence of the Governour the Government in its old form would devolve to the President of the Council of State, and although such President should be under equal obligations with the Governour to perform the Ministerial mandates, yet was the Convention fully satisfied that it would not be equally, if at all, in the power of the President to perform such mandates; and therefore this Convention cannot but consider the imputing their proceedings “to some undue influence of Governour Eden under the mask of friendship to America, and of the Proprietary interest in Maryland,” as groundless and unjust; nor is this Convention able to discover how their vote for the departure of Governour Eden from this Province could have any evil tendency to the common cause, or to Virginia in particular.

That as the Convention of Virginia hath by their said Resolution appealed to the good people of this Province against their Convention, and by their publication of the said Resolve, have endeavoured to injure this Convention in the good opinion of the United Colonies at large, it became the indispensable duty of this—though they are anxiously desirous to cultivate union and harmony with their sister Colonies—thus to vindicate their proceedings, and those of the Council of Safety, which this Convention did approve of, against the groundless and unjust imputations contained in the said Resolution of the Convention of Virginia; and conscious of the uprightness of their own intentions, and the rectitude of the measures they adopted, do wholly deny, and can cheerfully join in the appeal to their constituents, and to all men acquainted with the affairs of Maryland, against the charge of Proprietary influence.

On reading the Resolutions relative to the Resolve of the Convention of Virginia, the question was put, That the words, “and do,” in the last Resolve, between the word “did” and the word “approve,” be struck out of the said Resolve?

Resolved in the affirmative.

FOR THE AFFIRMATIVE.

FOR THE NEGATIVE.

Resolved, That the. following Declaration be entered on the Journal of this Convention:

A DECLARATION of the Delegates of MARYLAND.

To be exempted from Parliamentary taxation, and to regulate their internal government and polity, the people of this Colony have ever considered as their inherent and unalienable right. Without the former, they can have no property; without the latter, no security for their lives or liberties.

The Parliament of Great Britain has of late claimed an uncontrollable right of binding these Colonies in all cases whatsoever. To enforce an unconditional submission to this claim, the Legislative and Executive powers of that state have invariably pursued for these ten years past a studied system of oppression, by passing many impolitick, severe, and cruel acts for raising a revenue from the Colonists; by depriving them in many cases of the trial by Jury; by altering the chartered Constitution of one Colony, and the entire stoppage of the trade of its Capital; by cutting off all intercourse between the Colonies; by restraining them from fishing on their own coasts; by extending the limits of, and erecting an arbitrary Government in the Province of Quebeclc; by confiscating the property of the Colonists taken on the seas, and compelling the crews of their vessels, under the pain of death, to act against their native country and dearest friends; by declaring all seizures, detention, or destruction, of the persons or property of the Colonists, to be legal and just.

A war unjustly commenced hath been prosecuted against the United Colonies with cruelty, outrageous violence, and perfidy; slaves, savages, and foreign mercenaries, have been meanly hired to rob a people of their property, liberties, and lives,—a people guilty of no other crime than deeming the last of no estimation without the secure enjoyment of the former. Their humble and dutiful petitions for peace, liberty, and safety, have been rejected with scorn; secure of and relying on foreign aid, not on his national forces, the unrelenting Monarch of Britain hath at length avowed, by his answer to the City of London, his determined and inexorable resolution of reducing these Colonies to abject slavery.

Compelled by dire necessity either to surrender our properties, liberties, and lives, into the hands of a British King and Parliament, or to use such means as will most probably secure to us and our posterity those invaluable blessings,