vi

assessment in Baltimore city; the increase in the entire State
in seven years, from every description of property, appears to
have been only $11,514,445, whereas an assessment will, in
all probability, show an actual increase during that period
quite equal in the aggregate to that which was made in the
ten years preceding.

Should these remarks he well grounded, your Honorable
Body, upon making the requisite provision for a new assessment
may reduce the direct tax to half a mill in the dollar, and
yet the State will realize from this source of revenue $150,000
or enough to pay the interest on $2,500,000 of her debt. This,
it is believed, is a safe calculation. It will he well, however,
that this reduction should not take effect until after the as-
sessment shall have been completed and the new basis estab-
lished. Substituting, then, the probable receipts and de-
mands in 1860 for those of 1861, and reducing the receipts by
the sum of $80,000 there remains a surplus of $30,306 over
the disbursements for the same time, and estimating the nett
balance in the Treasury on the 1st of January, 1861, at $150,-
000 (which is $70,436.43 less than that reckoned for the 1st
of January, 1860) there will appear a clear remainder of
$180,306. In these estimates the item for expenses of the
Legislature might have been excluded, which would have
rendered the figures more favorable to the extent of $60,000
to $70,000.

In order to put the Legislature in full possession of all the
important facts in connection with this subject, the receipts
from the Direct Tax for each year from 1851 to 1859, both
inclusive, are here given, viz:

1851. - - - - • - $399,676,64

1852. ------ 472,135,65

1853. - - - - - 380,993.73

1854. - - - - - . 393,679.11

1855. - -- - 365,837.88

1856. ------------- 330,594.42

1857. ----- 233,303.02

1858. - - - - - - 245,215.99

1859. - - - 247,863.17