1867.] OF THE SENATE. 315

and must continue to be the principal agency by which this
State enhances her commercial prosperity, fosters her great
city, extends railway facilities to her people, and by means of
internal improvements, increases her own revenue, wealth,
population, influence and power. Whatever diminishes the
recources of that company, is injurious to Maryland; and no
measure having that tendency should be adopted unless the
compensating advantages are certain and ample. It would
be supreme folly to transfer the resources of that company to
its foreign rivals.

The State of Pennsylvania not only declines to exercise this
species of suicidal generosity towards us, but, in the interest
of that railway system which is clandestinely perverting the
Baltimore and Potomac charter to its own uses and to our
injury, is at this moment attempting most urgently to annul
the charter of the Pittsburg and Connellsville Rail Road
Company after fifty-eight miles of its road have been finished
from Pittsburgh to Connellsville, in Pennsylvania, and large
expenditures east of Connellsville have been made, the large
capital for which has been chiefly supplied from Maryland.

Yet it is proposed that we shall not only suffer so danger-
ous a project as this contemplated road between Baltimore
and Washington to be consummated by " foreign contrac-
tors" with " foreign capital," under a palpable abuse of our
existing legislation, but that we shall ratify a contract in-
geniously contrived to resume the control of the road to the
railway companies which, doubtless, are to supply the cap-
ital I

It would be far wiser to postpone the construction of a
railroad through Southern Maryland until the effects of peace
and the natural attractions of the line shall secure its con-
struction without a Washington branch; or even to build it
now at the expense of the State, or of the city of Baltimore,
or of the counties upon the line and the Baltimore and Ohio
Rail Road Company.

It is supposed by the committee that the extension of a branch
to Washington was contemplated by the Legislature and by
the corporators when the Baltimore and Potomac charter was
enacted, "as an indispensable part of the franchise." It is
true that, in general terms, the company was authorized to
construct branches twenty miles in length, and that the dis-
tance from the main line to Washington is not more than
twenty miles. But all such general powers are naturally un-
derstood to be applicable to the territory of the State and not
to another jurisdiction. The branching power was doubtless
intended for the accommodatian of our Southern counties.
In substance the charter manifestly contemplates a main line
from Baltimore to the lower Potomac, with branches in other