1867.] OF THE SENATE. 279

General Assembly has not hesitated in repeated instances, to
grant charters to build roads that conflicted in the same man-
ner, with the avowed interests of the State, that this does. The
Legislature of 1865, granted charters to two companies, viz:
the Metropolitan and the Knoxville roads, the construction of
which will operate in the same manner upon the supposed
interests of the State as the proposed branch from the Poto-
mac road. We further submit upon this point, that it was
absolutely impossible for any number of gentlemen of intel-
ligence to cast their eyes for a moment upon the map, show-
ing the proximity of the main stem to the National Capitol,
and considering tbat this was intended as a connecting link
between the great system of railways in the Northern and
Southern sections of the country without the importance, and
indeed the necessity of such a lateral branch being forced upon
their minds.

That such a thought should not have occurred to the minds
of the corporators, to whose interest it is so manifest, both as
affording the facility for reaching the National Capitol, to the
large amount of trade and travel expected to be conveyed
over the main stem; and also as affording inestimable facili-
ties to the local interests of all that part of the State through
which the proposed road should pass; or that the construc-
tion of such a branch should never have occurred to the
minds of the Legislature of the State, is a proposition, to our
minds, too absurd for serious contemplation.

In the consideration of this subject, the construction of the
proposed lateral branch, has appeared to us of such paramount
importance to the success of the whole project, that we are
fully satisfied that the adoption of the amendment proposed
in the memorial of the Baltimore and Ohio Rail Road Com-
pany, would be equivalent to a repeal of the charter of the
Baltimore and Potomac road; and your committee have been
consequently compelled to consider the relative advantages
and disadvantages which would flow from the completion of
the road to the Potomac River with its branch to Washington,
and the abandonment of the entire project.

Your committee are impressed with the conviction that the
Baltimore and Ohio Rail Road Company entirely under esti-
mate the results to the State and city of Baltimore, which
will follow the completion of the Baltimore and Potomac
road, or that company would not ask the Legislature to in-
terpose impediments in the path of that road upon objections,
when compared with such results, so utterly insignificant as
that the revenue of the State from the Washington branch
road will be diminished thereby

If Senators will look to any map showing the immense net-
work of railways connecting tho Southern and South-western