1874.] OF THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES. 213

Which was read and referred to the Select Committee on
that subject.

Mr. Latchford, presented the petition of Jacob Pina and
thirty-two other citizens of Prince George's county, asking
for an Act of Incorporation of Huntington, in said county.

Which was read and referred to the Prince George's dele-
gation.

Mr. Fenton presented the following memorial of a Joint
Committee of the City Council of Baltimore:

MEMORIAL.

Tour memorialists, a Special Joint Committee of the First
and Second Branches of the City Council of Baltimore, charged
with presenting to the General Assembly of the State of
Maryland some cause why the corporate limits of the City
of Baltimore should be extended, beg leave to present the
following facts and considerations:

Fifty-eight years ago the present limits of the city were
established by Act of Assembly. Since that time the popu-
lation of Baltimore has increased in number considerably
over quarter of a million, from 50,000 to upwards of 300,000,
a gain of more than six hundred per cent.

During the seventy years prior to the passage of the Act
of 1816, the limits of the town and city had been nine times
extended, the enlargement in every instance, while furnish-
ing large additional contributions to the revenue of the State,
being absolutely required by the gradually increasing popu-
lation of the city, whose material interests, at each extension
of its boundaries, were also greatly advanced.

The area Of Baltimore to-day is but a trifle over cloven
square miles, less than that of any other great city in the
Union. Ranked twenty years ago as the third, and even
now as the fifth city on the continent. Its boundaries are
more contracted by far than those of a score of American
cities which it exceeds in population, in influence, and in
commercial importance. Philadelphia now includes within
its corporate limits the entire county which formerly sur-
rounded it.

New York is enlarging its already immense area. Brook-
lyn has absorbed vast tracts of land in Kings county. Boston,
continually annexing its suburban towns, has recently taken
in three more ; while Chicago, an unsettled wild, long after
the present limits of our city were fixed, now stretches from
North to South, along the line of its lake shore, thirteen
miles.