intention of the Legislature. This charge, put in plain lan-
guage, is, that it was not the design of those who asked for
the charter to make, nor of the Legislature to authorize, a
lateral road to Washington, and consequently, that the con-
tract which has been made for the construction of the main
stem of the road, from Baltimore to the Potomae, with a lat-
eral branch road to the District line, is a perversion of the or-
iginal design of the Corporators, and contrary to the inten-
tion of the Legislature. The first object of the undersigned
will be, to expose the error into which the author of the me-
morial has fallen in each of the two allegations of fact con-
tained in this proposition.

It is submitted as a universal rule of construction of every
charter, that the corporators who prepare the law, and advo-
cate its passage, design to possess themselves of all the powers
thereby conferred; and that the intention of the Legislature
in granting a charter is to be gathered exclusively from the
language of the law which confers the franchise. Another
rule of construction equally universal in its application, is,
that where a general power is conferred to do a particular work,
with an exception forbidding its being done in some one mode,
the right to do the work in all other than the excepted mode
cannot be controverted. Tour attention will now be invited
to a few words in the charter of the Potomae Company. The
12th section of the Act of 1853, after providing for the main
stem, confers the power to make those lateral roads, in these
words : "with such branches at any point of said road, not
exceeding twenty miles in length, as the President and Di-
rectors may determine." And in a subsequent part of the
same section, the law gives the power in these words : "And
they may make, or cause to be made, lateral railways, in any
direction whatever, from the said railroad."

No argument can be necessary to those to whom this reply is
addressed, to show that the corporators of this road who pre-
pared and obtained the passage of the Act of 1853, intended
to acquire, or that the Legislature intended to confer the
powers granted by that Act. Can any one other than the
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, believe that when the
Baltimore and Potomae Company asked for, and the Legisla-
ture granted the power to make lateral roads from the main
stem of their road, "in any direction whatever,' that either
intended to exclude the power to make a lateral road to
Washington, the only point to which a lateral road could be
made without loss to the coporators? It is submitted, that
this argument is conclusive to show the error of the Balti-
more and Ohio Road, in imputing ignorance to the Legisla-
ture or corporators to the power conferred by the charter to
make a lateral road to Washington. The undersigned charges
that the effective argument of the Legislature of 1853, was,
that the power to make a lateral road to Washington, wag
essential to induce capitalists to make the main stem of the