582               JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS [Feb. 27,

General Assembly, have instructed me most respectfully to
submit for the information of the honorable body, over which
you preside, the following statement:

it is unnecessary to refer with particularity to the objects
and purposes of the act of December session, 1831, chapter
281, by which an annual appropriation was made of $10,000
for twenty years, and a Board of State Managers was ap-
pointed to carry out the objects of the act. The reports here-
tofore made by that Board to the honorable the General As-
sembly have shewn in what manner said appropriation was
expended, partly in removing a limited number of free peo-
ple of color and emancipated slaves to Africa, but mainly in
making ample preparation on that coast, to receive the great
body of that class of persons, whenever their condition in
this country should lead them to the conclusion that their
own interests required their removal thither.

So well satisfied were the successive Legislative bodies of
the State, with the course which had been pursued, that not
only, during all her financial embarrassments and difficulties,
was this annual appropriation not interfered with, but when
it terminated at the end of twenty years, by the expiring of
the act of 1831, the General Assembly, by the act of January
session, 1852, chapter 202, renewed the appropriation of
$10,000 per annum for the term of six years. This amount,
likewise, was received by the Board of State Managers, and
expended as was shewn by their reports, in continuing to
carry out the same policy, and in building up and enlarging
the accommodations of the Asylum prepared in Africa to re-
ceive any number of emigrants from this country who might
be expected to resort to it.

During this term of six years, as well as for many years
previously, the disbursements of the State's appropriation by
the Board of State Managers, was made as was stated in all
their reports, through the agency and instrumentality of the
Maryland State Colonization Society, of which, by the act of
1831, they were required to be members.

When the act of 1852 expired by its own limitation the
last General Assembly, adopting the views of their prede-
cessors, and coinciding with them in the propriety of continu-
ing to carry out the policy which had been invariably pursu-
ed by the State for the preceding twenty-six years, again re-
newed the appropriation of $10,000 per annum for four years
longer in a somewhat, modified form, by placing absolutely
at the disposal of the Board of State Managers the sum of
$5,000 in each year, and restricting them from making any