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also, without extra compensation, to act as the
historiographer of the State.
A department of labor and agriculture has
been provided, to the chief of which are com-
mitted, with enlarged sphere of operations, the
duties now devolving by law upon the commis-
sioner of immigration and the immigration
agent, both of which offices are abolished.
The office of State pension commissioner is
abolished, and the Legislature is prohibited from
ever thereafter enacting any general pension
law. It is understood that this was done in
consequence of the great complaints which have
come from all quarters of the immense avenues
to fraud and corruption opened to the unprin-
cipled by the operations of the present pension
system.
With regard to the public works of the State,
the board of public works is constituted, as now,
of the governor, comptroller and treasurer.
Concerning the Chesapeake and Ohio canal,
that corporation will remain virtually in the
same relation towards the State as now, and the
provision of the late act of Assembly requiring
the board of public works to cast the vote of the
State for the nominees of the preferred bond-
holders for directors was declared null and void.
Power is given to the president and directors to
regulate the toll rates. The board is also au-
thorized to exchange the State's interest, as
stockholder and creditor, in the Baltimore and
Ohio Railroad for an equal amount of the bonds
or registered debt of the State, provided such
exchange shall not be made at less than par,
nor less than the market value of said stock, and
it has authority also to dispose of the State's
interest in other internal improvements, except-
ing the Washington Branch railroad.
The entire body of the present State office-
holders, with the single exception of the Gov-
ernor, who will serve until the end of the term
for which he was elected, will be displaced oh the
adoption of the constitution, and the election
and qualification of their successors as provided
for therein.
The article relating to the city of Baltimore
39
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