However, it was concluded
that I should give them the heads of our complaints in writing,
and they promis'd then to consider them. I did so soon after,
but they put the paper into the hands of their solicitor,
Ferdinand John Paris, who managed for them all their law business
in their great suit with the neighbouring proprietary of Maryland,
Lord Baltimore, which had subsisted 70 years, and wrote for them
all their papers and messages in their dispute with the Assembly.
He was a proud, angry man, and as I had occasionally in the answers
of the Assembly treated his papers with some severity, they being
really weak in point of argument and haughty in expression,
he had conceived a mortal enmity to me, which discovering itself
whenever we met, I declin'd the proprietary's proposal that he
and I should discuss the heads of complaint between our two selves,
and refus'd treating with any one but them. They then by his advice
put the paper into the hands of the Attorney and Solicitor-General
for their opinion and counsel upon it, where it lay unanswered
a year wanting eight days, during which time I made frequent demands
of an answer from the proprietaries, but without obtaining any other
than that they had not yet received the opinion of the Attorney
and Solicitor-General. What it was when they did receive it I
never learnt, for they did not communicate it to me, but sent a long
message to the Assembly drawn and signed by Paris, reciting my paper,
complaining of its want of formality, as a rudeness on my part,
and giving a flimsy justification of their conduct, adding that they
should be willing to accommodate matters if the Assembly would send
out some person of candour to treat with them for that purpose,
intimating thereby that I was not such.
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