10

AUCTION DUTIES.

Statement No. 11, shows the names of the several Auctioneers in the
City of Baltimore, who have made returns to the Comptroller, during the
fiscal year ended 30th September 1854, and the amount of duty paid by
each. The aggregate sum received into the Treasury, from this source of
Revenue, was $18,632.67.

By chap. 266 of the Acts of 1853, the proceeds of these Duties are
appropriated to the City of Baltimore for the purpose of deepening and
improving a channel in the Chesapeake Bay and Patapsco River below
Fort McHenry.

BALTIMORE AND OHIO RAIL ROAD COMPANY.

The current obligations to the State have been faithfully discharged by
this Company during the fiscal year. The amount received from it for
the State's proportion of the receipts from Passengers on the Washington
Branch Road, which appears in Statement No. 12, amounted, for the year
to $62,877.53, which is a decrease of $7,548.85 when compared with the
receipts during the fiscal year, ended 30th September 1853.

It is not difficult to account for this diminution, when it is remembered
that last year many thousands of persons were attracted to Washington
from all parts of the Union, to witness the Presidential Inauguration and
the installation of a new Administration. The proof of this may be found
in a comparison of the receipts, on this account by the Company in the two
months of March and April of the two years. In March 1863 there was
received $43,171.26, and in March 1864 but $27,341.44, while in April
1853, the receipts amounted to $25,373.19, and in April 1854, to
$25,784,77. The aggregate amount of the two months of 1853 was
$68,544.45, and in 1854 was $53,126,21, showing an excess in favor of
1853 of $15,418.24 for these two months, yet in the entire year the
excess for 1853 only amounts to $7,546.85.

The fare charged in 1853 was much greater than in the early months
of the late fiscal year. It must be apparent, that the excess in the receipts
from this aource, for the preceding fiscal year is to be attributed solely to
the extraordinary travel and higher fare in March of that year, and not to