| 120 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE
five hundred shares. The company was given the right to con-
demn land and use the canal water for mills and forges. Be-
cause of the willingness of many to subscribe large sums of
money " to effect so laudable and beneficial a work," the Gen-
eral Assembly thought that it was only " just and proper that
they and their heirs should receive reasonable tolls for ever.
These tolls were-granted on the condition that the company
make canals around the major falls and clear and deepen the
river bed wherever necessary. In order to benefit from the
act, the company had to begin work within one year after the
company was formed, and had to complete the whole work
from Fort Cumberland to tidewater within thirteen years. As
a further encouragement to the company, the state promised
to subscribe to as many shares as Virginia did.138 From a legal
point of view the Potomac Company was lacking an important
requisite of a corporation. The land and works of the com-
pany were vested in the proprietors as tenants in common so
that the title lay not in the corporation but in the indivdual
shareholders- Early in 1785 Virginia passed a similar act and
subscribed to fifty shares.
Since the object of this essay is to trace the role of state
action in private enterprise in Maryland, only that part of the
Potomac Company's history relating directly to state encour-
agement and aid to the company will be discussed. '4I George
Washington, one of the most ardent advocates of opening the
Potomac route to the West, had wanted the state governments
themselves to undertake the work. But when he saw that there
was little chance for this plan to be adopted, he lent his name
arid influence to the plan of a corporation in which the states
would be stockholders 142 In order to make the Potomac River
an actual route for western commerce, roads linking the Poto-
mac with the Ohio River had to be provided. Conferences
among commissioners of Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania
la' Md. Sess, 1784 c. 33 (Preamble).
iee Ibid.
"° Livermore, p. 25&. As in the Susquehanna Company, the canal and works
were exempted from taxation.
lsl For a general account of the company's history see Davis, 11, 12o-13fi,
and
a monograph by Cora Bacon-Foster, " Early Chapters in the Development of the
Potomac Route to the West." Proceedings- of the Columbia Historical society,
XV (1911) .
"I'll Davis, 11, 121.
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