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1302 JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS [Mar. 28,
Police Board. The answer was, that there was no warrant
of law for such publication, and that it had never been made.
Besides, it was unnecessary.
An effort was made, on the part of those preferring charges
against the Police Commissioners, to show that secret orders
had been issued by them on the morning of the State election
to the Police Force, virtually nullifying those which had
been previously issued and publicly read to the men to con-
trol their action and behavior at the Municipal and State
elections. It signally failed. One witness only was pro-
duced who testified that the Captain of the Southern Police
District bad told him, on the day of the State election, that
he had received strange orders that morning, and that he
did not like them. He further testified, that the Captain did
not say what the orders were, or from whom he had received
them.
The Captain himself was subsequently put on the stand, as
a witness on behalf of those preferring the charges, and posi-
tively testified that he had made no such statement to the
witness, nor to any one else. That he had received no such
orders, and that the only orders read or given to the men in
his district, were publicly issued by the Police Board, and
that the only person who could give such orders to the men
under him, besides himself, were the Police Commissioners,
the Marshal and Deputy-Marshal, and that they had given
no such orders. The testimony of the whole Board and of
the Marshal was, that no such orders had been issued, nor
had they heard of such a charge, until after this investiga-
tion had begun.
Your Committee further report, that most of the evidence,
especially that of the Marshal of Police, whose testimony was
full and clear, developed the fact that for weeks prior to the
Municipal and State elections, an unusual degree of political
excitement existed in Baltimore city, that this excitement
was engeudeied and kept alive by a notoriously inflamma-
tory sheet in that city, with pretensions to respectability,
"but of meretricious character and factitious importance; and
by public meetings held in the interest of the so-called Re-
form party, at which the harangues were especially directed
to fomenting discord between the contesting political parties,
mnd to libelling the Police Force of the City. Notably was
this the case at the meeting held at the Maryland Institute
on the evening of Saturday, the 30th of October last. As
evidence that tte Police Force did its full duty in preserving
the peace of the city during the period of said excitement, no
better instance can be given than that a score of them at that
meeting for its protection, heard themselves most unjustly
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