1904.] OF THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES. 383

Mr. Goslin. delivered the following remarks, which
On motion of Mr. Hill,

Were ordered spread upon the Journal.
MR. SPEAKER :

"No knight of old renown deserves a higher place"
in the nich of fame, the affections of his people, and
the annals of his State, than Thomas G. Pratt. War-
riors may conquor territory, soldiers defend our liber-
ties, and sailors protect our commerce on the high
seas, but he who saves the honor of his people has
done more than they all. Such was the sublime mis-
sion of Thomas G. Pratt.

He was a chlvalric spirit whose white plume led the
fight when the stainless honor of Maryland was at-
tacked, and when many of its best citizens, viewing
with hopeless vision, the terrible burden of debt, ever
increasing, believed that the only road to relief was
that humiliating and dishonest resolve — repudiation.

There was not without specious and deceptive cause
for this resolve. This debt, the interest of which the
State even found itself unable to pay, was the child of
fraud and extravagance. The great donations to the
Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and the Baltimore and
Ohio Railroad had amounted to six million dollars,
and these added to its debt from other sources, had
brought the State's obligations beyond its power to
meet them. In addition to extravagant appropria-
tions hundreds of thousands of dollars had been
added to the debt, without the fulfillment of the an-
tecedent conditions, on which the State had agreed to
make the appropriations, so that, in the year 1844,
Maryland found itself with a debt of nearly $12,000,-
000, with a State assessment of less than two hundred
millions, which required one dollar in every fifteen of
the property of the State to pay the principal, while
every year the inadequate revenues, allowed the un-
paid interest to add to the millions of the principal of
the debt. What that debt was to the people of the
State then may be judged by the fact that now the
State debt, exclusive of all assets, is a little over two
millions and a-half, and the assessment in the Stare,
over six hundred millions, requiring but one dollar in