xii REPORT OF THE

Stock of the Potomac Company.................... $120,444 44

Loan to the President and Directors of Potomac

Company............................................ 30,000 00

Interest thereon to May 16th, 1825.............. 13,280 00

Nanticoke Bridge Company.......................... 4,333 33

Chesapeake Steam Towing Company............. 25,000 00

Bonds installed and not installed................... . 10,00000

Due from Penitentiary for premium and in-
terest................................................. 5,097 36

Stock of the Elkton Bank.......................... 10,000 00

Divideml Bond No. 58 of B. & O. B. ft. Co...... 80 00

$218,235 13

Being upon his books the Comptroller must, and does,
bring forward and set forth, in each annual report, the
above lot of worthless entries and the valueless stocks men-
tioned in the third clasp. I respectfully suggest that the
present General Assembly authorize the Comptroller, in his-
discretion, to omit them from his future reports.

The Constitution, Sec. 3, Art. 12, authorizes the Board ot
Public Works, subject to such regulations and conditions as
the General Assembly may from time to time prescribe, and
with provisos therein set forth, to sell the State's interest in
works of internal improvement. Her interest in the proper-
ties enumerated in the second class above being unproduc-
tive and of value chiefly, if not only, because it gives her the
control of the directory and management of the most impor-
tant of these works, it is proper that I, as Comptroller, and
ex-officio member of the Board of Public Works, should in-
dicate to the General Assembly that my views are not ad-
verse to a sale of her interests in some of these works. Her
mortgage of $1,000,000.00 on the Susquehanna and Tide-water
Canals was at one time a productive asset; but, when it
ceases to be productive, her only remedy is to take posses-
sion and management of the canals; a valueless remedy to
her--she already has one such elephant on her hands--but
valuable to the Reading Railroad Company, that now has a
lease of these canals, and, perhaps, to the Pennsylvania
Railroad Company, and other companies that may be looking
after the coal regions of Pennsylvania.