Mr. KELLEY. Mr. Speaker, I do not propose to discuss the details of the bill before the House; nor is it my object to answer the various objections which were raised to it yesterday; nor shall I, as did the Gentfrom " Chicago, speak under the apprehension of the effect my remarks or my vote on the bill may have upon uninformed constituents on the eve of an e eetion. My constituents, I apprehend, know my opinions on this subject pretty well. It was in 1850 that having met with Asa Whit neys pamphlet, and sought a conference with him on the subject of a Pacific railroad alon a northern route, [gathered as many as I could of the people of Philadelphia in a meeting presided over by the may or, and urged them to unite with me in up ying to the American Congress to grant to Mr. Whitney and his as sociates just what is proposed to be granted to other men by the bill now under consideration. From that day to this I have never doubted the wisdom of the preposition; nor have I felt less interest in the subject since a dear sister, and a graceful girl of rare intelli once, over whose childhood I had watched with 1 a fathers solicitude, have been laid in that valley which Bryant. who is yet in the enjoyment of lusty life, after he had passed li es meridian de scribed by saying "Where rolls the Oregon, and bearsno soundsavehis own dashings." I still have living kindred in that valley; and for the last ten years have been in frequent and constant correspondence with those who dwell near Puget sound, and have thus learned somethingl of the mighty and varied resources of the nort Pacific slope, the region through which the only river that enetrates the heart of the country pours itse f into the beautiful but sleepin ocean. I sha l discuss the bill in its broad and General relations. The question is, as the Gentfrom Oregon [Mr. Hnxonnsox] well said yesterday, one of the gravest importaiice that am been presented to this Congress. He said truly it was of national importance. He did not, however bound its importance by that suggestion. this a question for the world. From Lake Superior to Puget sound! A railroad stretching from Lake Superior to Puget sound, a distance of 1800 miles! To open to civilization and enterprise an empire longer and broader than western Europe from the southern vinelands of sunny Spain and Por tugal on the one hand, the hyperborean forests of Norwa on the other. Ies, sir, an empire equal to hngland, Ireland, Scotland, France, the German States, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, and Portugal fail, Mr. Speaker, to understand our relations to the age in which we live, and our duties to mankind, because we fail to appreciate the grand dimensions and unimagined resources of our country. We would regard ourselves giants did we estimate ourselves in proportion to possessions so grand in acountry so uboundin in multiform resources, so unde veloped, and "so sparsely settled. The region through which it is proposed to construct this road, exceeding in extent the territory of all the nations I have named, also embodies more mineral wealth than they all combined ever possessed. Biitwhat is its condition? It is a wilderness. Almost every acre of it is still innocent of the tread of a tax collector. It yields our country no revenue. Along the Pacific slope a.few thriving villages dot it. Some of them will one day be great cities, but they are now on the borders of a vast wilder ness. Sir, I appeal from the constituents of the Gentfrom Chicago [Mr. wiixrwourit] on the eve of an election to posterity and ask gentlemen to view the proposed enterprise in the light in which future generations will be hold it. They will look beyond the vast empire I have indicated. There lies the sleeping but broad Pacific, capable of bearing a commerce 1,000times heavier than has ever chafed the waters of the Atlantic: an ocean on which our flag is seen floating only from the masts of coasting craft or Whalers weiiding their slow way to thenorthern seas in nest ofhardearned wealth; an ocean whichs ould bear a commerce estimated by values in dollars and cents infinitely transe ending any the Atlantic has known or may ever know. Sir, so slightis our power upon that ocean that the recently pardoned rebel Semmes with a single vessel destroyed nearly 100 of our peaceablo whalers, giving their cargoes, gathered by years of dangerous toil, to the flames or the waves. It boun s our country for more than 1,000 miles, and our maritime power. which could not now protects mile of it, should be seen and felt upon it, and ourflag and white sails or the curling smoke of our steamers should shadow its every wave. That ocean belongs to us, and we should confirm our title by the right of occupancy; for when we cast our eyes beyond its placid surface we behold what is to be our next connest. The Old World is to he awakened by merican ideas. Its unnumbered people are to he quickened, instructed, and reeemed by American enterprise. Some statisticians tell us that there are 750,000,000 people in the ancient theocratic countries of the ast, which is the West to which the star of our commercial empire will next take its way. Others put the population at 1,000,000,000; and others at 1,300,000,000. There, where civilization dawned and the drowsy past yet lingers, the 1st impulses of a new cycle begin to he felt. Japan is yieldin to the impulses of our age. The Chinese wall is crumbling away. It was but yesterday that I had a letter informing me that our countryman, Dr. Martin, interpreter of the American legation at Pekin, under the employment of the Chinese Government had rendered into that language our Wheatons Law of Nations. Thus that vast and long isolated Power is preparing to enter into commercial connection with the world. The ancient civilization of Asia is giving way. At the end of 1,000s of centuries the doctrine of sacred castes is about to yield to the sublimer creed of mans freedom and equality. Muscular labor will soon he done there by the potent agents we now employ coal and iron and the genius of the buried dead, embodied in mechanism, will soon relieve their toiling millions as it now does ours. Their whole life is to be quickened by modern enterprise, and they will swell the numbers of the people on our acific slope. But the inviting field of the ocean and the vast field of ente rise and reward open to us in Asia are not the only considerations that induce me to support this bill. The laboring people of every eastern city have an intense interest in this question. The safety of our country depends upon the intelligence, the virtue, the stability of our laboring people. He legislates not wisely for a democratic republic who does not make it the aim of all his acts to improve the material condition of the great laboring masses of the country. If we would perpetuate our institutions we must see that the wages of labor are so maintained that the children of the laboring man shall grow up amid the endearnents of home and with the expectation that their children shall find more elegance and refinement in their homes than their parents were familiar with in childhood. The construction of a road through our northern gold region will open a field that will he a constant refuge for the surplus labor of our eastern States. There will be a refuge for those masses of ingenious workmen who are jostled each year by lack of adjustment of their numbers to the einand for their branch of labor, or are deprived of the advantage of the skill they acquired in youth by the invention of labor saving machinery; and instead of finding themselves as age gathers on their brow without the means of livelihood rich fields of enterprise easily reached will cheer their declining years. But again, the depression of our laborin people springs not alone or chiefly from local causes. Beyond the Atlantic ocean there are 350 million people in every community of which laboring men are held as raw material; and under the grusing influences of capital and the oppression o despotic governments are held in such bondage that they are made to subsist, even when they toil most assiduously, upon a modicum of the elements of life, upon a minimum of the amdunt that will keep the soul in a tolerably sound body. Ese aing from this subjection they are borne to our shores by tens and 100s of 1,000s each year. The are strangers in a strange land, many of them unacqnainted with our language and our habits,an are unconse iously and unwillingly the means of depressing wages. But if we give to the company the means to inaugurate work on this road we will not only relieve the laboring masses of our crowded eastern cities, but furnish employment for more than the annual influx of those whom we gladly welcome, because they strengthen and enrich us by their toil. Could we drain Europe of its surplus laborers we would raise her wages as she now too often depresses ours. What will be the true policy of the builders of this road? Will it not be to employ as laborers the heads of families, and to pay them with land and money, and settle the families along the line of the road, so that the laborer of one your will in the next farm his land and supply fresh laborers with bread? Thus will he who enters into an engagement with the company a pauper, or little better, find himselfat t leend ofu year or 2 an independent farmer n on the worlds great commercial highway. he managers of the road must pursue this policy, and will thus create business for and guard thoi r road; thus, too, they will quicken the mineral and agricultural resources of the country, and give to the tax collector, whether atn port of entry or in the service of the internalrevenue detment, more money each car than this bil is likely to cause to be taken rain the Treasury. I ask gentlemen, in considering this subject, to rise to its dignity and grandeur. Sir, I am a devotee to freedom, but would make every country in the world tributary to my own. I delight in ever manifestation of my countrys power. I awe l with pride asI contemplateits gigantic proportions and see how rapidly its people subdue the wilderness, and would, as I have said, make every nation tributary to its power i and grandeur; but I would do it. not by oppressing any people, not by war with any government, but y improving the condition of the masses of my countrymen and those who may become such, and showing the rulers and the people of the world how speedily free institutions exalt the poor and t in oppressed of all nations into free, self sustaining, and self governing citizens. It is in our power to do this, and by no other means can we do it so well or (yuickly as by passing this supplement and vivi ying the charter granted to the Northern Pacific Railroad comny. and, sir, it was not without some in ignation that I heard the words “swindle” and “public plunder” echoed and reechoed through this Hall yesterday from the lips of honorable gentlemen, no. one of whom had any knowledge of facts which justified the use of such language." Sir, one of Shakspeares characters says, on a certain o"ccasion: My lady doth protest too much." and I was a little struck yesterday with the constant protestations of honesty and virtuous indignation that accompanied those denunciations. Sir, I do not know the gentlemen who are named in or hold the charter. I believe I have been introduced in the street cars to some of them, but I know this: that gentlemen whose word I would take, from Vermont and Massachusetts and Maine, and " from other States, rise and tell me that they know them, and that they are among the honored men in the communities which they represent and I have looked in vain through the provisions of this bill to find that which should induce members to denounce such gentlemen as swin dlers and public plunderers, and men who are desirous “ of getting their arms into the Treasury up to the elbow.” 1 find no provision that justifies any such remarks; and it. was in this connection that I asked yesterday whether itblemarket value. was possible to exclude the lobby of the Cen tral and Union Pacific railroad from the floor of the House. I did not know that ithad been here, but I knew that there was.not that in the provisions of the bill which could animate Gentlemen to make such assaults upon men whose characters were indorsed as were those of the gentlemen who were so 3 oken of yesterday. Now, sir, what does this bill propose to do? The land was granted by the original not. What is the value of that land not its prospective value,but its present market value? There was a dispute yesterday betwmn a Gentfrom Iowa and a Gentfrom Ohio as to whether the representations of its value.made in one of the companys pamphlets were accurate. Sir, its valuetday as a market able commodity is zero. It is not regarded as marketable by the Government. It has no market value. What will be its value 5 years vhence? Who can say? I submit to gentlemen that this depends upon whether there be made into and through it an avenue or avenues by which commerce may be conducted and settlement made possible. Make 2 or 3 sections of mi road; settle the families of the laborers along its route, with the school house, the newspaperoffice, and the church in their midst, and the sections of land will be among those that will yield the heaviest taxation; their old and silver for the count abounds in go d and silver will flowinto an replenish your exhausted Treasury. But let it remain a wilderness, as it is now, and when we shall have ceased to live itwill still be untaxed an unproductive wilderness without an a main Therefore there might well be an honest misunderstanding or misapprehensionas to its value, to be settled by the time and circumstances of the valuation. Mr. Speaker, I again assert that I have been unable to detect any provision in this bill which looks like swindling. What are we asked to do? Why, when the stockholders shall have built 25 miles of road, we are to guaranty for not more than 20 years 6%. interest upon a fixed amount of stock permile and what is the offset to that liability? Why, sir, all the money received by the company from the sale of lands on the southern side of the road is to be paid into the Treasury of the U.S., to meet or partially meet that liability; and when 50 miles or more of the road shall have been completed, this process is to be repeated; and so, by sections of 25 miles, till the road shall be complete. This is the whole story. Yet it has been said that we are asked to guaranty the interest of $67,000,000 for 20 years. This cannot be possible. Some of the land will be sold before the road will be completed. But, sir, less than 20 years, perhaps in half that time, there is to be another relief for the Government. From the completion of the road 25%. of its gross earnings are to be paid into the Treasury of the U.S., together with all the proceeds of the sale of the land alon the south side of the road for 1800 miles. It is impossible that we can ever be called upon to pay forasingle year the interest on $57,000,000 or anything like that amount. The probabilities are that we may continue to ay something each year until the road shal reach the waters of the Missouri. I doubt whether we will ever be called on for a dollar of interest after that time; but if we shall, it will only be till the road shall have connected the commerce of the waters of the Missouriwith that of those of the Columbia, pouring their way down to the Pacific. After that, if the laws of population hold with us as they have done, the Government cannot possibly be called on for a dollar. Had any othercivilized nation such an empire, opening to its people such resources, maritimc, mineral, agricultural, and bucolic, would it hesitate to embark a few million dollars to develop and populate it? Would it shrink from so strengthening its commerce by an annual contribution that would not be felt in the payments of the country or observed in annouiicin the total of its receipts and payments? 0, air; there is no Government that would hesitate in such a case; and I do not believe that the American Congress will fall so far short of its duty, will hold the cop% so close to its eye, as to be unable to see the golden placer beyond, or will sanction the absurd policy of refusing to make a small annual outlay, for a brief term ofyears, for the development of resources the future value of which cannot be calculated. Sir, great railroads have never been built by the capital of the stockholders. They are always built by borrowing, or if built by capital paid in, siecial laws permit dividends to be paid from the capital and charged to the construction account. Mortgages are often issued upon the franchise and survey; and the 1st grading is often done by means of a loan. In this connection I ask the Clerk to read a few paragraphs from the admirable letter of Quar terMGen Meigs. They are full of sound sense and the lessons of experience in the railroad development of this and other countries.