368 TRAVELS IN THE CONFEDERATION 



heir of Lord Baltimore are null and void. A free and 

 independent state is not indeed essentially obliged to 

 justify itself in such a matter as against a private 

 person. Stat enim pro ratione voluntas. However, 

 Mr. Harford immediately after the armistice coming 

 over from Europe to contest for his inherited rights, 

 several grounds have been given for the action taken ; 

 among others, that during the Revolution Mr. Har- 

 ford was living in Great Britain, a subject of a power 

 inimical to the state, and hence was to be regarded as 

 an enemy of the province. Mr. Harford was born and 

 brought up in Europe, had never before been in Mary- 

 land, was at the outbreak of the war still under age, 

 and is at present only 23 years old, and was guilty of 

 no offence against the state of Maryland except that of 

 being the lawful heir of his father who drew thence a 

 yearly income of 20-25,000 Pd. sterling in ground-rents 

 and returns from his domains. 



The next Assembly will decide finally in this matter ; 

 but the outcome is easily to be foreseen when one re- 

 members that a whole people is unanimously resolved 

 its property shall no longer be held in fee-tail. The 

 state itself, by and through the change in its constitu- 

 tion, has assumed the paramount right, has purchased 

 the demesne estates of the family of Baltimore and 

 applied the proceeds to the maintenance of the war; 

 ground-rents are no longer paid, because another 

 method of taxation has been adopted and has become 

 necessary. Mr. Harford at most has no further hope 

 beyond receiving arrearages up to the year of his 

 majority; but even this is subject to as many doubts 

 and difficulties as all other payments which Europeans 

 are demanding of Americans. 



