4

jected to the delay and uncertainty of steamboat navigation
for a distance of fifty-five miles between that city and Acquia
Creek, would be enabled to pursue an uninterrupted route by
rail between Baltimore and the same point of only sixty-
eight miles in length. This was the first and principal object
of the Charter—the other was to furnish to the citizens of
those peninsular counties lying between the Chesapeake Bay
and the Potomac river, the railroad communications they so
much needed.

By their geographical position they were to a great extent
cut off from those facilities by rail enjoyed by almost all the
other counties, and dependent entirely in their access to
market, upon tide-water communication, often attended with
vexatious delays, and at certain seasons entirely obstructed.
It was therefore proposed by means of the " Branches" and
"lateral Railways," authorized By the charter to secure to
those counties, direct railroad communication to the city of
Baltimore. We are not therefore surprised that with such
objects in view, the Legislature of Maryland granted the
charter without a dissenting voice.

After a lapse of nearly fourteen years, and after the time
for commencing the construction of the road, had been re-
peatedly extended by Legislative Acts supplementary to the
charter, and no work ever commenced—it is understood that
within a few months past, a contract for the construction of
the road and its branches has been executed and the contrac-
tors are about to begin operations.

If we could believe that this contract was for the construc-
tion in good faith of the Main Stem and branches contem-
plated by the Charter, the execution of it would unquestion-
ably be received with satisfaction by the people generally of
the State; certainly no objection to it would ever be interposed
by these memorialists; but all the circumstances of the case
point, we think, to a very different conclusion. We hazard
nothing in saying that the great object sought to be accom-
plished by those outside the corporation, who with such sur-
prising and new-born zeal have taken the subject in hand
and are willing to embark large means in the accomplishment
of a work that has languished so long for want of capital, is
not the construction of the road between Baltimore and the
Potomac river, with branches and lateral roads into the coun-
ties of Maryland, but by perverting those terms to purposes,
which neither the Legislature nor the friends of the Act ever
had in view, to seize upon this franchise as the only avail-
able opportunity of accomplishing what those concerned have
failed to secure by other means—another Railroad from Bal-
timore to Washington City.

It is a fact so well known as scarcely to require the stating
that for the last four or five years, ceaseless and persistent