280 JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS [Feb. 24,

in whose direct benefits they have not shared, would
long since have amounted to a sum larger than that which
they will be allowed to receive. As far back as 1836,
$1,000,000 was pledged and set aside for works of internal
improvement on the Eastern Shore; and the revenues of
the State have been benefited by accruing interest to nearly-
double the amount of the original appropriation. The jus-
tice which demands that the balances due the several coun-
ties should be paid when called for, will, your committee
are sure, be acquiesced in by every one of your honorable
members.

And here it may not be deemed inappropriate, in view of
its great importance to the State, and especially to the city
of Baltimore, to suggest the great advantages of a connecting
link of 13 miles of rail between Middletown, on the Delaware
Road and Elkton, which give all the peninsular counties, in-
cluding those of Delaware, and ultimately of the Eastern
Shore of Virginia, a choice of the markets of Baltimore and
Philadelphia, with the advantage of a saving in distance over
the present route by Wilmington to Baltimore of thirty miles.
The building of this road would measurably atone for the
great advantages that have been lost to the State by failure
to construct the Eastern Shore Railroad as originally contem-
plated, from Elkton on the level near the Delaware line, to
some suitable point on the bay shore of Somerset county,
with connecting laterals to the county towns. This subject
receives additional importance from the knowledge that the
trafic from all this inland portion of the Peninsula is finding
a market in Philadelphia, and the fact cannot be disguised
that the affinities of a people go hand in hand with their
trade. The people of the Eastern Shore are devotedly at-
tached to their State, and proud of her history, which they
have in no small part contributed to make, and the direct
interest of Baltimore alone demands that they should not for
the want of the trifling sum required to coustruct this short
connecting road, be left in a condition in which they may be
constrained by interest to form connections, which even in
the remote future may affect their relations and attach them
to a people with, whom they cannot be supposed to have the
same congeniality as for the citizens of their own state.
Nothing can be more important to a state than to hold to-
gether the different portions of her territory in the bonds of
a common interest, and though your Constitution prohibits
any measure of relief in the case indicated, yet the fact has
none the less significance, and your committee have deemed
it of sufficient importance, in anticipation of the enhanced
taxable basis of this portion of the State, to call attention to
it in the hope, that under the influence of Legislative appro-
bation, sufficient interest will be aroused in Baltimore to
lead to the accomplishment of this short but very important