310 JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS [Feb. 26,

	NEGATIVE.
Messrs. Bowie, Brodwater, Compton, Henkle,	Kimmel, Spates, Stephenson — 7.

Mr. Davis, of Washington from the minority of said Com-
mittee, submitted the following report:

REPORT.

To the Honorable,

The Senate of Maryland:

The undersigned, a member of the Committee on Internal
Improvements, dissents from the report of that Committee
upon certain memorials relating to a proposed amendment
of the charter of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Com-
pany, and he begs leave respectfully to submit the following
minority report:

The proposed amendment was designed to prevent that
Company from constructing a branch Railroad to the city of
Washington. It was urged on the grounds that the Com-
pany has, in effect, transferred its chartered rights to parties
who are using them for purposes detrimental to this State;
that the scheme of these parties and of the Railway interests
which they represent, is not to construct the Railroad from
Baltimore to the lower Potomac, according to the main intent
of the charter, but to construct a Railroad from Baltimore to
Washington under cover of a general authority to make
branches, and that this was an abuse of the charter which
ought to be restrained. It was insisted, in support of the
amendment, that the construction of the road from Baltimore
to Washington would injure the State, and that the omission
to construct the Southern portion of the Baltimore and Poto-
mac Railroad would disappoint the just expectations of the
people of several counties.

The Committee in effect, have decided that there is danger
that, under existing arrangements, those counties will be
thus disappointed, and they have reported a bill which is in-
tended to guard against that particular abuse, but they have
not thought that the larger interests of the State involved in
the question need any protection.

The bill reported by the Committee, under the title of a
"supplement" to the charter, appears to have two leading
objects: The first is to give legislative sanction to a contract
which has been made by the Company, and the second to en-
force, by a heavy penalty, the construction of the entire line
of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad; the penalty being no