as almost all the other productions of the field,
by reason of which such a great famine was caused that many persons
died of starvation, and a mother killed her own child and ate it, and
then went to her neighbors, calling upon them to come and see what she
had done, and showing them the remains of her child, whereupon she was
arrested and condemned to be hung. When she sat or stood on the
scaffold, she cried out to the people, in the presence of the
governor, that she was now going to God, where she would render an
account, and would declare before him that what she had done she did
in the mere delirium of hunger, for which the governor alone should
bear the guilt; inasmuch as this famine was caused by the weevils, a
visitation from God, because he, the governor, undertook in the
preceding summer an expedition against the Dutch residing on the South
River, who maintained themselves in such a good posture of defense,
that he could accomplish but little; when he went to the Hoere-kill on
the west side of that river, not far from the sea, where also he was
not able to do much; but as the people subsisted there only by
cultivating wheat, and had at this time a fine and abundant harvest in
the fields--and from such harvests the people of Maryland generally,
and under such circumstances as these particularly, were fed--he set
fire to it, and all their other fruits, whether of the trees or the
field; whereby he committed two great sins at the same time, namely,
against God and his goodness, and against his neighbors, the Dutch,
who lost it, and the English who needed it; and had caused more misery
to the English in his own country, than to the Dutch in the enemy's
country. This wretched woman protesting these words substantially
against the governor, before Heaven and in the hearing of every one,
was then swung up.

[Footnote 255: The war of 1672-1674. But the attack on the Hoere-kill
(Whorekill, now Lewes, Delaware) was not an act of war against the
Dutch, but an attack by Marylanders on inhabitants who were under the
jurisdiction of the Duke of York, in a territory disputed between him
and Lord Baltimore.]

In addition to what the tobacco itself pays on exportation, which
produces a very large sum, every hundred acres of land, whether
cultivated or not, has to pay one hundred pounds of tobacco a year,
and every person between sixteen and sixty years of age must pay three
shillings a year. All animals are free of taxation