354 JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS [Mar. 2,

one main building for officers' quarters, dining-rooms, kitchen,
&c., erected at a cost of thirty-five thousand dollars, and three
family buildings, at an expense of fifteen thousand dollars each.
Your Committee have not seen money better applied for along
period than in the erection of these buildings, the whole is ad-
mirably adapted to the use they were intended for, and the
State is fortunate in having the aid and experience of the gen-
tlemen in charge of this institution; they have now under their
charge one hundred and eighty-six colored boys, who they take
by commitment of the different Courts of the State, and train
them to farming, and shoemaking and tailoring, and give them
a common English education, and then bind them out to the
farmers in different parts of the State, till they are twenty-one
years old. Good order and system prevails; the management asks
for the usual appropriation of ten thousand dollars per annum,
to maintain the institution, and an appropriation of fifteen
thousand dollars to complete the necessary outbuildings, and
your Committee recommend that the sum be appropriated for
its completion and maintenance.

The Penitentiary appears, from the report of the Directors
and Warden, to be in a most nourishing condition, but the dis-
satisfaction beginning to show itself among the mechanics at
the contract labor system now carried on in the Penitentiary,
and the increasing value of the site where it is now located,
may lead the State to consider whether it would not be more
prudent and profitable to change its location, and erect a new
one somewhere on a Railroad where more and cheaper room
may be had for manufacturing purposes and new industries
started, not so much in competition with Baltimore mechanics;
indeed a large number could be very profitably employed in
cutting the canal from Bladensburg to the Patapsco, the neces-
sity for which has been so long felt by the citizens of Baltimore
and the State, thereby shortening the time when the Chesa-
peake and Ohio Canal will begin to make return for the large
outlays made by the State for that work.

The Tobacco Warehouses were the next subject for consider,
ation, and the objections made against false packing and over,
sampling looked into. A law should be passed to panish the for
mer offence, and great care should be taken in the selection of
Deputy Inspectors to prevent the latter. That, with other neces-
sary reforms about to be introduced, will, your Committee be-
lieve, make the present system of inspections better than any
other system yet suggested.

Since the meeting of the last Legislature two of the warehou-
ses have been burned, and a considerable agitation is now
going on in regard to whether they shall be erected on the old
sites or on deep water. Your Committee has taken some trou-
ble to learn the opinion of the planters on that subject, bat
they are divided, some believing on deep water the best loec-