564 JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS [Mar. 13,

The Hon. C. J. Pennington, Assistant Secretary of State,
appeared and delivered the following communication from
His Excellency, Governor Groome :

EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT,

Annapolis, March 12th, 1874.

To the Senate :

I respectfully return, without my approval, Senate bill
No. 69 entitled an Act to incorporate the Frederick City
Superphosphate Manufacturing Company.

The majority of thinking men who have observed the
course of legislative proceedings in the several States, have
long regarded the frequent resort to special legislation as a
great evil. It adds to the length, and greatly increases the
expense of a legislative session, and occupies a large propor-
tion of the time which legislators might otherwise more
profitably employ in devising measures of public utility.
Grave objections have been found to exist to the creation of
private corporations by special Acts. Such Acts are often
passed by the Legislature with so little examination, that
frequently when it is attempted to organize the corporation
and carry out the purposes for which it was called into exist-
ence, it is found that it has been clothed with powers so in-
adequate that additional legislation must first be obtained,
while in many other instances powers of the most extraordi-
nary and dangerous character which the Legislature would
never have intentionally granted have been found to be con-
ferred under general words, or under artfully contrived
clauses of the charter, the meaning of which were not fully
understood, at the time of its passage ; and the power to grant
charters of incorporation by special Acts has proved in several
of the States a fruitful source of legislative corruption.

A knowledge of the evils incident to this class of special
legislation, and a desire to prevent them thereafter, led the
framers of the Constitution of 1867 to insert in that instru-
ment the following provision :

"Corporations may be formed under General Laws, but
shall not be created by Special Act, except for municipal
purposes, and except in cases where no General Laws exist
providing for the creation of corporations of the same general
character as the corporation proposed to be created ; and any
Act of Incorporation passed in violation of this section shall
be void." (See Article III. section 48.)

Chapter 471 of the Acts of 1868 supplied the General
Law, under which, in accordance with the provisions of sec-
tion 48 of Article III. of the Constitution just quoted, cor-
porations of the same general character as those provided
for in said Act must be created.