tention of the General Assembly to this subject. Had the re-
commendation presented in my Message in January met a
prompt response on the part of the Legislature, I have every
reason to believe that it would have been attended with a
large increase of the receipts into the Treasury, at the same
time that it would have conferred positive benefit upon the
people of the State, especially in the counties bordering upon
the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, whose pursuits have
been seriously interfered with by persons from other States
throwing themselves into competition with their labor, and
setting our laws at defiance.

Not being among the number of those who recognize in a
national debt a national blessing, I look with earnest solici-
tude to the steady and ultimate liquidation of our State debt,
and the rigid limitation of its further increase during the in-
tervening period required to affect it. It is a judicious pro-
vision in our Constitution which accompanies every measure
of appropriation, with the taxation necessary to enable the
people to feel at once the burthen which it imposes. The
value of adequate and liberal sinking funds in all large ap-
propriations, has been illustrated by the past history of our
finances, and has enabled us already to effect a large reduc-
tion in our funded debt. The power conferred by the Con-
stitution upon the Board of Public Works to cancel the obli-
gations of the State, issued for the Baltimore and Ohio Rail
Road Company, by an exchange of the securities held by her,
for an equal amount of the securities for which she is respon-
sible, to be furnished by said corporation, should be availed
of, in my judgment, whenever opportunity occurs, as a sound
measure of finance, and the public liabilities placed beyond
contingency, by a prompt cancellation of the State Bonds,
whenever the arrangement can be advantageously affected.
The connection of the finances of the State with the success or
failure of corporations created by her, is, to say the least, of
doubtful policy, and has been attended in some of the States
with the most serious embarrassments. Where it is eminent-
ly the dictate of policy to lend a helping hand to enterprises
of undoubted public benefit, it is equally clear that a State
has no right to subject herself to the contingencies of the fu-
ture, when her object is accomplished, and an opportunity
offered to reimburse her advances. In regard to the works
of the State of Maryland, to which large credits have been
extended, my uniform opinion has been, that the security and
safety of all interests would be consulted by a dissolution of,
such co-partnerships whenever the terms offered were such as
to justify this action. This argument is stregthened by the
fact, that in reference to most of these corporations, the State
in the Acts of Incorporation has protected herself against any
hostile discriminations, against the legitimate trade of our
people. This argument, however, in not intended to apply