RESOLUTIONS. 1842

the absolute necessities of the government require—and
how has Maryland so lately prosperous and once the wil-
ling dispenser of bounties become embarrassed in finance
and involved in deep pecuniary distress, the same feeling
has occasioned it which existed in seventeen hundred and
ninety, but differing in this respect, that the one was indul-
ged in moderation and resulted in legislation not beyond our
means, and was a virtue, the other precipitated into excess
and led to expenditures more than could be justified by
our condition, and was a vice; but the resemblance does
not end with feeling which prompted the action in the se-
veral cases, it goes farther, and in this that the consequen-
ces in both cases have been the benefitting of the general
government, the earlier instances directly, the later indi-
rectly, but on this account the less certainty or the less ex-
tensively.

The great works of internal improvement in the incep-
tion of which Maryland was aided by the united contri-
bution of the general government and of Virginia, but
whose prosecution has fallen so heavily upon her own have
been fruitful in blessings to the Union, and the completion
of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, the work whose pro-
cess has most deeply involved the pecuniary condition of
the state, promises to the general government yet more
striking advantages.

This needs no other illustration than to remind the house
that the Baltimore and Washington Rail Road runs directly
to the metropolis of the Union, and thus furnishes the great-
est convenience of intercourse to and from the seat of gov-
ernment, while its connexion with the Baltimore and Ohio
Rail Road not only extends this benefit to the immense
west, but affords other facilities composed to which the mere
convenience of intercourse for ordinary purposes is but
trifling, found in the readiness with which important infor-
mation is disseminated, while dispatches are accelerated to
a degree capable of untold advantages, the transportation
of arms is made easy and the removal of soldiers for the
exigencies of the government so robbed of its difficulties
and delays, that no reasonable fears can exist that the inter-
est of the government will long suffer for the want of the
power to support them in all these varied respects those
works have contributed, and will contribute to the interest
of the Union in ways and to an extent to which human sa-
gacity looks in vain to ascertain the limits; it may be the
preservation of rights the dearest to her existence, and to
the execution of purposes the most magnificent that may
await her destiny, it should be added to justify the promi-
ses intimated to be derived from the completion of the