the President and Directors to obtain a contract for the build-
ing of the whole road, and that the proposed modification
would, in effect, be a repeal of the charter.

The people, resident in the section of country through
which this road is proposed to be built, have never derived
directly, or indirectly, any advantage from the magnificent
system of internal improvements inaugurated by the State—
they alone have been literally the hewers of wood and draw-
ers of water—to them alone has belonged the poor privilege
of paying, without a murmur, the taxes levied by the State
to meet the interest incurred upon money advanced for simi-
lar improvements in every other part of the State. The un-
dersigned submits that, unlike the roads and other improve-
ments made for the benefit of all the rest of the State, the
charter of the road upon which the war is made, appropriates
no money to aid in its construction. It simply confers the
power to make the road from Baltimore to the Potomac, with
the privilege of making such branch roads as the President
and Directors may authorize; and this naked privilege of
building these roads, with their own money, the Legislature
is now invoked to take from them, not because it would in-
jure the the people in any part of the State, but because it
would conflict with the monopoly or exclusive privilege of
the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad-Company to carry passen-
gers and freight between the city of Baltimore and the city of
Washington. Power and magnanimity usually accompany
each other; but here, this wealthy corporation, whilst using
its funds (properly the undersigned will not question) in buy-
ing and extending roads in other States, thus conferring ben-
efits to others than our own people, not content with all the
the elements of power which it possesses, or is exercising—
not content that its own charter is left intact, and its exercise
of powers uninquired of, actually asks of you to repeal a
charter, not because it is about to be, or has been violated by
the corporators, but because the company is about to build
roads in literal conformity with the express power conferred
by the charter, and intended to be so conferred. The case
must be a strong one which would justify this act of flagrant
injustice, and you will not cause the calamitous consequences
which would flow from this action, even at the request or
quasi command of this potent memorialist.

The undersigned proposes to show that the author of this
memorial (certainly not the Preident of the Baltimore and
Ohio Road) is in error in every material fact alleged in that
paper, and that no one of the deductions from such alleged
facts are logically true.

The memorial under consideration first asserts, that the
Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Company are about to pervert
their charter to very different objects than those contemplated
by those who obtained its passage, and in conflict with the