xxii REPORT OF THE

Courts, when the matter is properly brought before them, which
will be done in a case now ponding in the Court of Appeals.

If the exemption legally existed before, was it not expressly
waived and the grant of it surrendered by the acceptance .of the
Act referred to, and the stipulation above cited, which certainly
after its acceptance by the Companies, was as binding on them as
it was on the rest of the people of the State who never had any
special opportunity of voting upon its acceptance, and who were
not specially the beneficiaries of that legislation.

It has been argued on the ether side, that because by the pros-
perity of these corporations and the immense amount of business
and trade induced by their construction, equipment and management,
the City of Baltimore and the State at large, has he-en incidentally
benefitted, that therefore it would be unfair on the part of the Leg-
islature to enforce the payment of taxes by the corporations them-
selves, or by their stockholders. The same argument would apply
to every citizen who enhances his property by improvements which
incidentally benefit the neighborhood of its location. No farmer for
instance can improve his farm by the expenditure of capital without
incidentally adding something to the enhancement of the locality in
which it is situate or benefitting in some way, some portion of the
society among which ho lives, and yet the County Commissioners
in every county in the State, and the Assessors from time to time
appointed, invariably regard such improvements as legitimate addi-
tions to the basis of taxation, and the laws of the State require
that they should be so regarded. The more the farm is improved,
the larger of course will be the production and consequent value,
and the higher the rate of assessment must be made to conform to
that value, notwithstanding that the expenditure may have been
comparatively a venture, and may have added incidentally to the
enhancement of the locality or the prosperity of the neighborhood.
I can see no reason therefore why capital invested in railroads, (if
it yields a profit,) should not pay its share of the burden of taxa-
tion, as well as capital invested in any other stock or property, nor
can I see any justice in its being exempted from taxation, or power
in the Legislature under the Declaration of Rights so to exempt it.
But granting for the sake of argument, that the stock of such Com-
panies may have been legally exempted from taxation in its in-
cipiency, and when it was uncertain whether the investment
would ever remunerate, and that such exemption is founded oa
contract, which cannot now be impaired, still docs it follow at all,