Mr. JOHNSON. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company and the city of Baltimore both are exceedingly anxious to have the connellsville railroad completed. A charter was obtained from Pennsylvania for that purpose, and a charter from Maryland. The Maryland charter authorized the company chartered by Pennsylvania to come to umberland, so as to connect with the Baltimore and Ohio railroad. Owing to causes which it is unnecessary now tomention, Pennsylvania alter having granted a charter to that company repealed it; repealed it upon the ground that the company had not complied With the conditions of the charter. There was some suspicion that the cause of that repeal was to prevent the trade coming to Baltimore. Whether that is true or not is immaterial. There is asnituow gending between the Connellsville Railroad ompany and another company chartered by Pennsylvania, in which the validity of the rewealing act is in issue. I tried a cause in voving that question in the circuit court at Williamsport, Pennsylvania, during the last summer, and the judges there decided that that law was unconstitutional. The controversy is not yet settled. That question was upon a motion to dissolve an injunction. But. since then I am glad to say to my friendfrom Ohio that under a charter granted by Maryland, the object of which is to bring the Baltimore and Ohio railroad more directly in connection with Washington than it is now by virtue of the existing road, a route has been surveed from the Point of Rocks, coming through the neigh boring county of Montgomery, and the company are about to commence that work at once, and I have very good reasons to believe that that road will be completed in a very short time, the effect of which will be to ire a direct communication from the city of Vashington to the West, which everybody must see is very desirable. Whether if such a communication had existed before 2 or 3 million dollars would have been saved to the Government is perhaps problematical, because the great expense an trouble to which the Government was put, and to which the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company was subjected, was from the raids upon that road, and those raids would have applied just as well to a road continu ously running from this District to the nearest point upon the Baltimore and Ohio railroad as upon the road as it existed. M colleague will pardon me for adding a wor further. The late lamented POTUS and the present SecyWar have. over and over again told me, and they have communicated it oiiiciully to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, that the service rendered by that road to the U.S. during the rebellion was invaluable. It not only saved 1,000s and 1,000s of dollars, but it saved this capital. One of the feats which they achieved at the instance of the Government, and without which icrhaps we might have been defeated at Ric mond, was bringing 40,000 soldiers of GenlSherman s army to the relief of the capital in order to join Grants army. They brought the whole of them, I think, in 2 or 3 days, without losing a man or losing anything connected with that branch of the Army, even a cannon or anything else; and they were as speedily as possible sent to the front, by that means enabling GenlGrant with the force be before had to accomplish the victories which were so priceless in their results, and have thrown so much s leudor upon his own name.