| THE STATE IN THE MARYLAND ECONOMY, 1776-1807 243
rate .2411 Proposals were soon submitted to the legislature for a
bank with capital of $3,000,000 to be ultimately raised to $9;
000,000 as the trade of Baltimore should demand. The plan-
ners also offered stock in the new company to the state and
proposed a union of the two banks if both consented.z'$
The charter as issued by the Assembly reduced the capital
to no more than $1,200,000. The House of Delegates gave spe-
cial attention to the form of this charter and later it was used
as a model for other bank charters.ZS° It differed considerably
from the charters of the banks of Maryland and Columbia and
seems to have drawn some of its provisions from those of the
Bank of the United States. Like it, the Bank of Baltimore was
to have a charter of limited duration (twenty years) , an iden-
tical regressive stock voting system to limit the power of the
majority stockholders, compulsory- rotation of directors, limits
prescribed to the debts of the bank and its issues, personal lia-
bility of directors for debts exceeding a limited amount, arid
semi-annual dividends. Additional similarities were the re-
quirements providing for governmental ownership of stock and
appointment of a certain number of directors, governmental
inspection of the bank's books, and governmental permission
for public loans of more than a certain amount."1 In order to
avoid Baltimore City ownership of the Bank of Baltimore, the
capital was allotted to be subscribed among the counties. This
further differentiated it from the Bank of Maryland .252
Opposition from the Potomac Company and from Annap-
olis, which always feared Baltimore as a trade rival, hindered
subscriptions but in a short time the bank was able to organ-
ize. It has done business on the same corner for one hundred
sixty-six years-since 1930 under the name of the Union Trust
...[James McHenry], R Brief Exposition of the Leading Principles of a Bank
(Baltimore, 1795) passim; Bryan, p. 21.
=4°Federai Intelligencer and Baltimore Daily Gazette, Apr. 30, 1795.
'61 Bryan, p. 21.
aa'Md. Sess., 1795 c. 27 and "constitution of the Bank of the United States"
in the " Report on a National Bank," Dec. 14, 1790, The Works of Alexander
Hamilton, ed. Henry Cabot Lodge (New York, 1904) Federal Edition, 111,
431-37. Bryan, p. 16, finds the influence of the Bank of the United States
on the
Bank of Baltimore "not great;' but an examination of the two charters dis-
doses more similarities than Bryan notes. The only important differences
per-
tained to branches for the Bank of the United States and public debt shares
forming part of its capital.
252 Bryan, p. 29.
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