MEMORIAL.

To the Honorable,

The General Assembly of Maryland:

The Memorial of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company,
respectfully invites your attention to the subject of a proposed
modification in the charter of the Baltimore and Potomac
Railroad Company, and your consideration of the objects
sought to be accomplished by that charter, and the very dif-
ferent objects to which its provisions are about to be made
subservient unless that modification is adopted.

The Charter was granted by an Act of the Legislature of
Maryland, passed in 1853, and authorized the construction of
a Railroad from a point in or near the City of Baltimore, by
the way of Upper Marlboro' and Port Tobacco, to some ter-
minus on the Potomac between Liverpool Point and St. Mary's
river.

There were two objects contemplated by the Act, as will be
remembered by those concerned in its passage, and is abun-
dantly manifest by a recurrence to the report of its Engineer,
J. R. Trimble, Esq., made shortly afterwards. These objects
were both so obviously just and proper that the Act of In-
corporation met with no opposition whatever, and was passed
by a unanimous vote in each House.

The first of these objects was to supply a missing, but very
desirable link in the great chain of Railroad connection be-
tween the Northern and Southern extremities of the Union.

From Baltimore, northward, two great trunk lines, em-
bracing together a distance of more than two thousand miles,
extended into the interior of Canada. Whilst southward
another line commencing at the Potomac, near Acquia Creek,
traversed some twelve hundred miles of territory towards our
Southern frontier; the only connection required to make this
line continuous and complete, was the road which this Charter
authorized across the territory of Maryland. By means of it,
through travelers between the North and South, instead of
being compelled to go by the way of Washington, and sub-