1846. No. 11. The following named gentlemen and their associates, will purchase the Southern Railroad, and the Tecumseh Branch Railroad, viz: Oliver Lee, Henry H. Sizer, Wm. O. Brown, Freeman Clark and Alexis Ward, all of the state of New York; provided that the Legislature of Michigan will grant a charter, which shall not be subject to future legislation, except under provisions similar to those in the charter to the Central Railroad Company. The corporators to have the right of extending the Southern Railroad to the line of the state of Indiana at such point as they may deem expedient, and of continuing the Tecumseh Branch Railroad to connect with the Erie and Kalamazoo Railroad at Palmyra. For the roads, with the engines, cars, depots, iron, oil, wood, tools and all property and materials, thereunto belonging, will be paid the sum of six hundred thousand dollars, in the liabilities of the state as follows: One hundred thousand dollars within three months from the passage of the act of incorporation, and the balance in yearly payments of the same amount ($100,000) with interest at the rate of six per cent per annum. The purchasers to signify their decision with regard to their acceptance of the charter within three months from the day that the bill becomes a law, and to have possession upon the payment of the first $100,000. The period of three months is proposed to afford the corporators and their associates ample time for the examination of the provisions of the charter. H. D. MASON, Report of A. BLAIR, from the Committee on the Judiciary, upon the subject of the extension of the right of suffrage to colored persons. The undersigned, one of the committee on the judiciary, to whom was referred a "joint resolution proposing to amend the second article of the constitution relative to the elective franchise," together with a very large number of petitions very numerously signed by citizens of the state generally, praying such amendment, respectfully reports: That he has given the subject all the consideration which a very limited time and the various duties of the committee would allow. And though the undersigned is not able now to go into so thorough an examination of this question in this report as he would be glad to do, it is still hoped that a very long continued agitation of the question of the extension of the right of suffrage to all inale citizens above the age of twenty-one years, without distinction of color, outside of this hall and the enlightened advance of public opinion consequent upon it, have rendered lengthy argument unnecessary here. The extension is demanded more particularly in behalf of our fellow citizens of the long neglected (and I think I may safely say, long oppressed) African race. In the consideration of this subject, I have had no difficulty in arriving at the conclusion that the prayer of the petitioners ought to be granted. Any other conclusion is deemed to be directly at war with the very spirit of our republican institutions, based as they are upon the doctrine, that a perfect equality of rights, both civil and political, is the birthright of every man of whatever name or color or nation. The constitution of Michigan, which it is now proposed to amend, in the very first line of its first article, as the fundamental proposition upon which all the rest is based, asserts, that "all political power is inherent in the people." Believing as I do, most fully in the truth of this doctrine, I am entirely at a loss for any pretext upon which a large class of the people can justly be |