It is supposed that the road cannot be constructed in less than five years.  In that event, bonds of the government to the amount of four millions of dollars will issue annually.  Probably the road will not be built in less than ten years, and that will require an issue of bonds amounting to two millions a year; and possibly the road may not be finished in less than twenty years, which would limit the annual issue of bonds to one million.  The interest upon these bonds, at five per cent, will of course have to be paid out of the treasury, a treasury in which there is now a surplus of twelve or fourteen millions of dollars.  When the road is completed and the whole amount of twenty millions in lands is paid, making the whole sum advanced by the government forty millions, the annual interest upon them will only be two millions.  And what is that?  Why, sir, the donations and benevolences, the allowances of claims upon flimsy and untenable grounds, and other extravagant and unnecessary expenditures that are granted by Congress and the executive departments, while you have an overflowing treasury, will amount to the half of that sum annually.  The enormous sum of two millions is proposed to be paid out of the treasury annually, when this great road shall be completed!  It is a tremendous undertaking, truly!  What a scheme!  What extravagance!  I understand the cost of the New York and Erie road alone, constructed principally by private enterprise, has been not less than thirty millions—­between thirty and thirty-three millions of dollars.  That work was constructed by a single State giving aid occasionally to a company, which supplied the balance of the cost.  I understand that the road from Baltimore to Wheeling, when it shall have been finished, and its furniture placed upon it, will have cost at least thirty millions.  What madness, what extravagance, then, is it for the government of the United States to undertake to expend forty millions for a road from the Mississippi to the Pacific.

Mr. President, one honorable Senator says the amount is not sufficient to induce a capitalist to invest his money in the enterprise.  Others, again, say it is far too much; more than we can afford to give for the construction of the work.  Let us see which is right.  The government is to give twenty millions in all out of the treasury for the road; or we issue bonds and pay five per cent, interest annually upon them, and twenty millions in lands, which, if regarded as money, amounts to a cost to the government of two millions per annum.

What are the objects to be accomplished?  A daily mail from the valley of the Mississippi to the Pacific; the free transportation of all troops and munitions of war required for the protection and defense of our possessions on the Pacific; which we could not hold three months in a war either with England or France, without such a road.  By building this road we accomplish this further object:  This