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Assented to
March 10, 1858.
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Resolution authorising the Governor to institute
proceedings, to obtain the opinion of the Judges
of the Court of Appeals, in relation to an ap-
propriation made by the act of seventeen hun-
dred and ninety-four, chapter seven, to provide
a permanent fund for the further encouragement
and establishment of Washington College.
Resolved by the General Assembly of Maryland,
That his Excellency the Governor, be and he is
hereby authorised and required to cause such pro-
ceedings to be instituted, as may be necessary to
obtain the opinion of Judges of the Court of Ap-
peals of Maryland, on the following question:
whether the annual appropriation made by the
second section of the act of seventeen hundred
and ninety-four, chapter seven, (entitled an act,
to provide a permanent fund for the further en-
couragement and establishment of Washington
College, of the sum of twelve hundred and fifty
pounds, current money, to be applied by the visi-
tors and governors of the said College, to the pay-
ment of salaries to the principal, &c. , constitutes
a contract on the part of the State, under all the
circumstances of the case, which could not be le-
gally reduced by the act of seventeen hundred and
ninety-eight, chapter one hundred and seven, or
legally repealed by the act of eighteen hundred
and five, chapter eighty-five, by the Legislature
of this State: whether these two last acts and
each of them, is not in violation of the tenth sec-
tion of the first article of the Constitution of the
United States, which declares that no State shall
pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts;
and, whether the first act with the circumstances
of the case, constituted such a contract as would,
if entered into between individual citizens, be le-
gally binding upon them, and that the result of
such proceeding, be reported to the Legislature at
its next session; Provided, that nothing in these
resolutions, or any accession under the same shall
compromise the State, or in any manner bind her
by trie decision of said court, or commit her to the
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