The Intelligencer, & Petersburg Commercial Advertiser

CLAIMS OF LORD BALTIMORE'S HEIRS IN MARYLAND.—The Legislature of Maryland has voted to employ counsel to contest the claims prosecuted in the courts of the United States, by Mr. Browning, the heir at law of Lord Baltimore, against the landholders of that state, for quit-rents. Most of the lands of Maryland granted by the lord proprietors before the revolution, were granted with a reservation of an annual rent of four shillings sterling for every hundred acres. Lord Baltimore's rents, amounting to thirteen or fourteen thousand pounds sterling per annum, were regularly paid semi-annually or annually, to receivers residing in each county to the year 1771; and it is alleged by the claimant, that they have not been paid since. In the year 1780, the Legislature by law abolished the quit-rents from the 4th of July, 1776. The heir of Lord Baltimore now claims as a debt which he is entitled to recover under the treaty of 1783, the rents due for the nine years from 1771 to 1780, the aggregate amount of which is three or four hundred thousand dollars. The claim being against individual landholders, for small amounts, the legislature has thought it reasonable that the state should incur the charge of making a defence to the suits which have been brought.