each road district, sufficient in amount to maintain the road in good order, with privilege to the tax payer to discharge the assessment against him in work upon the road. The County Court should have the power upon proper complaint, to compel by mandamus, the citizens of each road district, to comply with the law, and the existing proceeding against the overseer should not be disturbed, but a moderate compensation fixed by law should be allowed for his services. No compensation is necessary for the Commissioners, except that which is now allowed to them for similar services when acting in their ordinary official capacity. No exemption from road tax should be made in favor of any property liable to taxation, nor in favor of any person by reason of age or occupation.

RAILROADS.

Since the adjournment of the Fortieth General Assembly, the debt of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, amounting to $1,671,916.00; that of the Mississippi and Tennessee Railroad, amounting to $316,774.00, the balance due from purchasers of the Knoxville and Charleston Railroad amounting to $51,125.00, and that of the Mississippi Central Railroad amounting to $1,199,180.00, have been paid in the bonds of the State, and the same have been cancelled in pursuance of law. I transmit the report of R. P. Neely, Receiver of the Mississippi Central Railroad. This receivership cost the State nothing. I required the purchaser to pay all the expenses of operating the road while it was in the custody of the State.

THE PENITENTIARY.

The number of convicts in confinement on the first of December, 1978, was 1,153 The total number on the first of December, 1876,

was 997, showing an increase of 156 in two years. The number confined in the main prison on the 1st of December, 1878, was 600.

One of the greatest improvements made in the administration of the affairs of the State is in the management of this institution. I have made frequent personal inspections of it, and I am satisfied, after making due allowance for its deficient accommodations for the large number of convicts, that there is no penal institution in any of the States where its inmates are under better moral training and discipline, or where the sick or death roll is smaller. The officers in control of the prison have secured this result by kindness and humane treatment, and by the enforcement of proper sanitary regulations.

Under the provisions of the act approved March 26, 1877, the Penitentiary and labor of the convicts was leased to A. M. Shook for six years, from the first day of August, 1877, for a rental of seventy thousand five hundred dollars per annum. The payments are made quarterly, and have been met as they mature, and the proceeds passed into the Treasury. In addition to this cash rental, the lessees receive the convict at the place of conviction and pay the cost of transportation, which heretofore cost the State an average of twelve thousand five hundred dollars per annum. But two or three of the States of the Union realize a surplus from prison labor, and' the State prisons of two or three others are self sustaining. The prisons of about the same number of European states pay expenses, and in all of them, in Europe and America, the industries of their respective localities are pursued.

From 1833, the year of the inauguration of the Penitentiary system, to 1865, the average expenditure by the State for its support, over and above its earnings, was fifteen thousand dollars per annum,

making a total of four hundred and ninety-five thousand dollars; for the succeeding four years, the State paid out for the same purpose, the sum of four hundred and fifty-nine thousand seven hundred and forty-six dollars and sixty-one cents, or an average of $114,936.67 per annum; and from the first of January, 1870, to the first of December, 1871-the time at which the lease to Cherry, O'Conner & Co. went into effect-the State paid on the same account the sum ot two hundred and four thousand three hundred dollars and twenty cents.

When the Penitentiary was established Nashville was a village, and its present location was in the country; now it is almost in the heart of a growing city, with no room for its enlargement-now an absolute necessity.

The prison has no sewerage, no adequate hospital arrangement, it is in the way of the improvement of the city of Nashville, and the absence of the sewers, makes it at certain seasons of the year dangerous to the general health. In my message to the 39th General Assembly, I urged its removal. The reasons for it are more potent now, and I earnestly repeat the recommendation, and suggest its removal to some point below the city on the north side of the river, where the State can secure isolation and perfect ventilation and sewerage, without the expenditure of any considerable amount of money; the rental derived from the labor of the convicts should be appropriated to the purchase of another site, and for the construction of a new prison. In six years, the term of the present lease, it will amount to four hundred and twenty-three thousand dollars. With this sum a prison can be constructed creditable to the humanity and character of the State. The necessity for separate accommodations for female and juvenile convicts is great and growing, and in

the construction of a new one, provision can be made for this class of offenders.

Upon the discharge of a convict, the lessees furnish him with a suit of clothes and transportation to the place of his conviction. I recommend that he be furnished by the State with a few dollars in money for his subsistence from the prison to his home. In the management of the prison, with the convicts employed in different parts of the State, with the rights and jurisdiction of the lessees to be maintained, and official protection afforded to the prisoners, the utmost care and watchfulness is required of the State prison officials. The State has under pay a Superintendent, Warden, Deputy Warden, Surgeon and Chaplain, who are charged with this great responsibility, their united salaries amount to five thousand six hundred dollars per annum. Four years of observation satisfies me that this pay is very moderate for the service rendered, and that it would be a calamity to the State and to the prisoners, to dispense with any one of these places.

LITIGATION AT WASHINGTON.

The Attorney General of the State having certified to me his ininability to attend to the suits recently tried in the Supreme Court of the United States, to which the State was a party, because of the necessity for his attendance upon the Supreme Court of the State, I employed J. B. Heiskell, Esq., to appear for the State, and transmit his report of the result of the litigation, so far as it has been determined. Among the cases disposed of was the case of Keith vs. Clark, involving the liability of the State to receive the "new issue" notes of the Bank of Tennessee for taxes. The judgment of the Supreme Court of the State was reversed, and the case remanded to the April term of the Court at Jackson. It will be observed from

the report of Mr. Heiskell, that the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States leaves open the defense that the "new issue" was in aid of the war between the States. It will be necessary for the General Assembly to make provision for Mr. Heiskell's fee for past and future services in this case and the cases finally disposed of.

THE FEDERAL DEBT OF TENNESSEE.

Under the authority of the Act of May 24th, 1866, Governor W. G. Brownlow executed and delivered three bonds, dated the 1st of June, 1866, in favor of the United States; one for $337,993.73; another for $94,152.85, and the other for 21,661.73, all due in two years, and bearing interest from date at the rate of 7 3-10 per cent. per annum, for property and railway material sold to the Edgefield and Kentucky and the Memphis, Clarksville and Louisville railroads. Upon a demand for a payment of these bonds my immediate predecessor, Governor John C. Brown, insisted upon an abatement of the price of the material to its actual value, also for a credit for the value of the bridges and other property of these roads destroyed by Federal authority, and for a credit for the value of the rails and cross-ties removed from the Winchester and Alabama railroad by Federal authority. The 37th General Assembly authorized Governor Brown to settle these mutual demands, but the adjustment was refused and the credits denied by the Auditing Officer of the Federal Government. An appeal, without effect, was then made to the Congress to authorize the settlement. The Federal authorities, have several times during my official terms of office, appealed to me for a settlement of our debt without considering the credits claimed by the State; and upon a recent repetition of this demand, I placed the record in the hands of Senator Harris with the request