314 JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS [Feb. 26,

strate that some great interest is concerned in the scheme of
building the road between Baltimore and Washington, and
that it is, in no sense, a Maryland interest. Indeed the com-
mittee disclose that it is "foreign capital" which is to build
the road and the couclusion is obvious that some foreign in-
interest is to be promoted by building it. There is no rea-
son to believe that, in these times $2,900,000 of "foreign
capital" would so eagerly seek investment in a rail road
which is to run beside a formidable rival, for the sake mere-
ly of dividends. The advantages which attract this foreign
capital are doubtless commercial or, more definitely, advan-
tages to be conferred on a system of railways "foreign to
Maryland, not foreign only, but inimical to the commercial
system of Maryland." It is highly probable that the inter-
est concerned in this scheme is the railway interest of Penn-
sylvania. That powerful interest already penetrates this
State as far as Baltimore by controlling the Northern Cen-
tral Rail Road. If it can transfer to itself the decisive advan-
tage of a connection between Baltimore and Washington,
now belonging exclusively to our Maryland system of inter-
nal improvements, the Pennsylvania railway management
will have crippled its principal competitor and achieved a
prodigious success for itself at the expense of Maryland. Its
success will be complete wnen it controls at once the North-
ern Central and the new rail road between Baltimore and
Washington. All efforts to prevent it from turning that
line to the advantage, of Pennsylvania railways, and Penn-
sylvania commence by declaring Balto., to be a territorial point,
or by any other paper restrictions, will be futile. The revenues
and other benefits which it 'is yet in our power to retain for
this State, and for the great company which is the main support
of her commercial prosperity will then be employed to ag-
grandize a vast system of foreign and rival interests. It is
not for Baltimore that they build rail roads, even when they
nominate Baltimore as a "territorial point," nor does their
benevolence embrace Southern Maryland.

The immense importance of this railway connection be-
tween Baltimore and Washington, whether as an essential
part of our own system of internal improvements or as an af-
fluent and an agency of a hostile system, has been acknowl-
edged on all sides. Those who now seek it under cover of
the Baltimore and Potomac charter, have made prodigious
exertions to procure it through the action of Congress. Those
exertions were unanimously and successfully opposed by the
Legislature of this State. On both sides it was clearly per-
ceived that the question is not of petty, personal or local con-
cern, but of vast consequences involving extensive railway
systems and affecting the prosperity of cities and of States.

The Baltimore and Ohio Rail Road Company has been,