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294 JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS [Feb. 11,
The expediency o| passing it is also plain and
clear. The Belt Railroad is the connecting link
through the City of Baltimore, between the Baltimore
and Ohio Railroad proper and its Philadelphia ex-
tension. It is built in the interest of and for the
benefit of that great corporation; and the Belt Rail-
road Company was organized and chartered, and
special powers conferred upon it by the amendatory
Act of 1890, for the construction of its tunnel and
road, in order that the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
Company might thereby indirectly obtain great privi-
leges, franchises and advantages, which it did not
dare to ask for in its own name, because it knew that
the reasonable and just prize it would have to pay
for these extraordinary privileges would be the sur-
render of its chartered exemption from taxation.
With fair notice given to it by the amendment
offered in the Senate in 1890, which it had then in-
fluence enough to defeat, that such a condition might
be exacted with a thorough understanding of the
popular sentiment embodied in the proposed consti-
tutional amendment already alluded to, passed at the
session of 1890, and the ratification of which by the
people, it must have known to be reasonably cerain,
it stood sponsor to its creature the Belt Railroad
Company. And hence, as Governor Jackson says
in his message, there is no injustice and no breach
of faith in the enactment of the proposed law,
which will deny to it the right to use this clever de-
vise to obtain additional concessions without paying
for them, unless it will consent to submit to the same
mode and measure of taxation to which all the other
corporations of the State are subject.
The State will not seek to evade or escape from the
bargain which it made with the Baltimore and Ohio
Railroad Company, ill-advised and unfortunate as
that bargain has turned out to be. But to submit to
concessions already procured, is one thing. To grant
new concessions is a totally different thing.
If the use by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Com-
pany of the tunnel and road of the Baltimore Belt
Railroad Company is important, or valuable, or essen-
tial to it, by just so much, should it be willing to pay
a fair price for the right to make this use and in the
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