1874.] OF THE SENATE. 403

Mr. Davis, from the Committee appointed to visit the
Spring Grove Asylum, 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 interest of the State in that Institution, respect-
fully 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 Mary-
land Hospital," and their successors forever. That the Pres-
ident and Vistors have very extensive powers of purchasing
any "messuages, tenement houses, and real estate, "and "all
other hereditaments of whatsoever nature, kind and quality
they be in fee simple, or in any other manner, and also all
personal estates whatever." They also have full power and
authority to give, grant, sell, lease, demise and dispose of'
the same at their will and pleasure as they shall judge most
beneficial and advantageous to the good and charitable end,
and purposes of the Act of incorporation.

Your Committee find that under the Act of eighteen hun-
dred and twenty-seven, chapter two hundred and five, the
Maryland Hospital was declared to be a "common hospital"
for the reception of all kind of patients, until by resolution
number sixty-five of the December Session, eighteen hun-
dred and thirty-eight, the President and Visitors of the Mary-
land Hospital were enjoined to make the same exclusively
a lunatic asylum ; and to appropriate 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 eighteen hundred and fifty-eight,
chapter ——, fixed the amount to be paid by the county
sending a lunatic pauper to the institution at one hundred
dollars per annum. The amount now paid by the counties
for the support of their pauper lunatic is two hundred dollars
per annum ; and while the Committee do not think this
power would be exercised to the detriment of the institution
or abused, yet a wise and just policy requires that the State
alone should exercise; discretion as to the propriety of selling
or disposing of this property, and the title of which ought to
be vested in the State.

The State has wisely reserved to herself the power to regu-
late by law this hospital, and she exercised that power when
it was changed from a common hospital to an insane asylum,
and she has also reserved the power to alter and change the
Act of incorporating the President and Visitors of the Mary-
land Hospital wherever it may seem right for the Legislature
to do so.

The asylum is a large and commodious building, con-