XVI REPORT OF THE

Among the productive assets will be found some of
the best paying securities and properties in the State, no-
tably the stock of the Annapolis Water Company,
amounting to $30,000.00, paying annually a dividend of
7 per cent.; stock of the Washington Branch of Bal-
timore & Ohio Railroad Company, amounting to $550-
000.00, paying 10 per cent, interest annually; other
stocks and bonds of the Baltimore and Ohio Company
and bonds of the Northern Central Railway Company,
amounting, in the aggregate, to the sum of $2,834,615.70,.
that yield annually interest at the rate of 6 per cent.

WHAT THE FUTURE PROMISES.

When that portion of the State Debt for which a tax
is now provided shall have been paid, which will oc-
cur, as I have shown, in a few years, and the Sterling-
Debt of the State which will soon mature, and upon
which we are paying 5 per cent, interest in gold, shall
be renewed by issuing a new bond at the rate of interest
which the State's high credit will enable it to issue and
place; with such economy as is now practiced and en-
forced in almost every department of the State govern-
ment; with improved methods of taxation which a new
Constitution or amendments to the present one will bring,
then if the State should continue to hold its produc-
tive assets and investments, although there will not be
any debt taxes for State purposes (as the tax of 8| cents
will not then be in existence) there will yet be an annual
surplus in the Treasury which will amount in a few
years to a sum sufficient to pay the residue of the debt
for which there is no tax provided.

In order to present this view of the subject more
plainly, let us suppose that we had already reached the
point when that part of the debt for which a tax is pro-
vided, to wit: $4,190,000.00 was paid, and only the re-
maining part of the State debt, to wit: $6,770,535.56 was.
to be provided for, and|it was funded at a rate of inter-
est not exceeding 3 per cent., and apply this condition
of things to the revenues for the year 1886, after de-