554 JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS [Feb. 27,

Mr. Merryman, Chairman, on the part of the House, of a
Joint Select Committee, submitted the following

REPORT.

The Joint Committee appointed to visit the Maryland Hos-
pital for the Insane, at Spring Grove, Baltimore county, to
look after the interests of the State in that Institution, re-
spectfully report, that they proceeded to the said hospital,
and after making a thorough examination, found the title of
the property is "vested in the President and Visitors of the
Maryland Hospital and their successors forever, for and as a
common State Hospital." That the President and Visitors
have very extensive powers of purchasing any "messuages,
tenement houses and real estate," and "all hereditaments
of whatsoever nature, kind and quality, in fee-simple or in
any other manner, and also all personal estate whatsoever."
They also have full power and authority to give, grant, sell,
lease, demise and dispose of the same, at their will and pleas-
ure, as they shall judge most beneficial and advantageous to
the good and charitable end and purposes of the Act of In-
corporation.

Your Committee find that under the Act of 1827, chapter
205, the Maryland Hospital was declared to be a "common
hospital" for the reception of all kinds of patients, until, by
Resolution number 65, of the December session, 1838, the
President and Visitors of the Maryland Hospital were enjoined
to make the same exclusively a Lunatic Asylum, and to ap-
propriate one-half of its capacity to the accommodation of the
pauper lunatics of the State, to be treated at the expense of
the county sending such lunatic paupers,and the Act of 1858,
chapter 421, fixed the amount to be paid by the county send-
ing a lunatic pauper to the Institution, at $100 per annum.
The amount now paid by the counties for the support of their
pauper lunatic, is $200 per annum.

The Committee find the title to the property vests in the
President and Visitors of the Maryland Hospital, and while
their powers are such as usually are granted to private cor-
porations, yet they are extraordinary with respect to the power
of alienating the property of the Institution, as they shall
judge to be most beneficial and advantageous to the good and
charitable ends aimed at by the State, in creating the hospi-
tal. And while the Committee do not think this power
would be exercise, to the detriment of the Institution or abus-
ed, yet a wise and just policy requires that the State alone
should exercise discretion as to the propriety of selling or dis-
posing of any property belonging to it. The State has wisely
reserved to herself the power to regulate by law this hospi-
tal, and she exercised that power when it was changed from
a common hospital to an Insane Asylum, and she has also