In Senate Novemr. 4th 1784

Ordered that the Committee for revising the Laws, be, & hereby are instructed, to revise the Laws already in being, respecting, the mode of admitting, or excluding persons commonly called Absentees; and consider what further measures are necessary to be taken for that purpose: & prepare a Bill, if they shall judge necessary, proper to carry the same into effect & that the said Committee report on or before the first Thursday of the next sitting of the General Court.

Sent down for Concurrence Samuel Adams President

In the House of Representatives Novr. 5th 1784

Read & Concurred

Samuel A Otis Spkr. A True Copy Attest Thos. Edwards Clk. of the Senate

DS .

Impost & Excise Office Suffolk County Novr. 24th. 1784

Samuel Henshaw1 Collector of Impost & Excise for the County of Suffolk, informs the Attorney General, that on the Day above mentioned, He seized forty Casks of Molasses, imported into the said County, on board the Brigantine called the Harmony, Zebulon Foster Master, for not being entered in the Manifest as required by an Act passed the first Day of July last, intitled “An Act in addition to, & for the explanation of, an Act, entitled An Act laying Duties of Impost & Excise on certain Goods Wares & Merchandize therein described; & for repealing the several Laws 320 heretofore made for the Purpose,” and desires the said forty Casks may be libelled for trial agreeably to Law.

S. Henshaw

RC ; internal address: “The Honble. Robert T. Paine Esqr. Attorney General for the common Wealth of Massachusetts.”

1.

Samuel Henshaw (1744–1809) graduated from Harvard in 1773 and became a lawyer in Milton. He was appointed collector of excise for Suffolk County in 1783 and five years later moved to Northampton, where he was appointed a justice of the peace and of the quorum for Hampshire County the same year (Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 18:246–250).