The governing power opposed to this family party was the House of Burgesses, or lower house of assembly. Those freeholding tenants and small proprietors who had brought with them from England their time-honoured habits of self-government in court leet and court baron, represented the democratic element in the constitution of Maryland, as the upper house represented the oligarchical element. The history of the period we are considering is the history of a constitutional struggle between the two houses. We have seen that it was not a part of the proprietor’s original scheme that the assembly should take an initiative in legislation, and that on this ground he refused his assent to the first group of laws sent to him in 1635 for his signature. Apparently it was his idea that his burgesses should simply comment on acts passed by their betters, as on old Merovingian fields of March the magnates legislated while the listening warriors clashed their shields in token of approval. If such was the first notion of Cecilius he promptly relinquished it and gracefully conceded the claim of the assembly to take the initiative in legislation. But the veto power, without any limitation of time, was a prerogative which he would not give up. At any moment he could use this veto power to repeal a law, and this was felt by the colonists to be a grievance. On such constitutional matters, when we read of antagonism between the proprietor and the assembly, it is the burgesses that we are to understand as in opposition, since the council was almost sure to uphold the proprietor.
Rights of the burgesses.
One point upon which the upper house always insisted was that the burgesses were not a house of commons with inherent rights of legislation, but that they owed their existence to the charter, with powers that must be limited as strictly as possible. But this point the burgesses would never concede. They were Englishmen, with the rights and privileges of Englishmen, and it was an inherent right in English representatives to make laws for their constituents; accordingly they insisted that they were, to all intents and purposes, a house of commons for Maryland.[109] On one occasion a clergyman, Charles Nichollet, preached a sermon, in which he warned the burgesses not to forget that they had no real liberty unless they could pass laws that were agreeable to their conscience; as a house of commons they must keep their hand upon the purse strings and consider if the taxes were not too heavy. The family party of the upper house called such talk seditious, and the parson was roundly fined for preaching politics.
Cessation Act of 1668.
But it would be grossly unfair to the proprietor to overlook the fact that on some important occasions he took sides with the representatives of the people against his own little family party. As an instance may be cited the act of 1666 concerning the “Cessation of Tobacco.” As the fees of public officials were paid in tobacco, a large crop was liable to diminish their value, and accordingly the upper house wished to contract the currency by an act stopping all planting of tobacco for one year. The lower house objected to this, but after a long dispute was induced to give consent, provided Virginia should pass a similar act. The speaker, however, wrote to Cecilius urging him to veto the act, and he did so.[110]
Sheriffs.
The occasions of difference between the two houses were many and various. One concerned the relief of Quakers. In Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Jamaica, they were allowed to make affirmations instead of taking oaths. When the Quakers of Maryland petitioned for a similar relief, the burgesses granted it, but the council refused to concur. A more important matter was the appointment of sheriffs. In addition to the ordinary functions of the sheriff, with which we are familiar in more modern times, these officers collected all taxes, superintended all elections, and made out the returns. These were formidable powers, for a dishonest or intriguing sheriff might alter the composition of the House of Burgesses. Sheriffs were appointed by the governor, and were in no way responsible to the county courts. The burgesses tried to establish a check upon them by enacting that the county court should recommend three persons out of whom the governor should choose one, and that the sheriff thus selected should serve for one year; but the upper house declared that such an act infringed the proprietor’s prerogative. No check upon the sheriffs, therefore, was left to the people except the regulating of their fees, and upon this point the burgesses were stiff.
Restriction of suffrage, 1670.
In 1669 the disputes between the houses were more stormy than usual, and in the election of the next year the suffrage was restricted to freemen owning plantations of fifty acres or more, or possessed of personal property to the amount of £50 sterling. This restriction was not accomplished by legislation; it must have been a sheer assertion of prerogative, either by Cecilius or by Charles acting on his own responsibility. All that is positively known is that the sheriffs were instructed to that effect in their writs. It is worthy of note that a similar restriction of suffrage had just occurred in Virginia. Perhaps Charles Calvert was imprudently taking a lesson from Berkeley. But still worse, in summoning to the assembly the members who had been elected, he omitted a few names, presumably those of persons whose opposition was likely to prove inconvenient. When the burgesses demanded the reason for this omission, Charles made a shuffling explanation which they saw fit to accept for the moment, and thus a precedent was created of which he was not slow to avail himself, and from which endless bickering ensued. For the present a house of burgesses was obtained which was much to the governor’s liking; accordingly, instead of allowing its term to expire at the end of a year, he simply adjourned it, and thus kept it alive until 1676,—another lesson learned from Berkeley.
Death of Cecilius, 1675.