nt, I have said that if the condition was
a road or no road, I would regard one hundred and fifty millions of
dollars as well laid out by the government for the work; though I
have no idea that it will take such an amount. Eighty or one hundred
millions of dollars will build the road.

But with regard to what is due from this generation to itself, or
what may be left to the next generation, I say it is for the present
generation that we want the road. As to our having acquired
California, and opened this new world of commerce and enterprise,
and as to what we shall leave to the next generation, I say that,
after we of this generation shall have constructed this road, we
will, perhaps, not even leave to the next generation the
construction of a second one. The present generation, in my
opinion, will not pass away until it shall have seen two great lines
of railroads in prosperous operation between the Atlantic and
Pacific Oceans, and within our own territory, and still leave quite
enough to the next generation--the third and fourth great lines of
communication between the two extremes of the continent. One, at
least, is due to ourselves, and to the present generation; and I
hope there are many within the sound of my voice who will live to
see it accomplished. We want that new Dorado, the new Ophir of
America, to be thrown open and placed within the reach of the whole
people. We want the great cost, the delays, as well as the
privations and risks of a passage to California, by the malarious
Isthmus of Panama, or any other of the routes now in use, to be
mitigated, or done away with. There will be some greater equality
in the enjoyment and advantages of these new acquisitions upon the
Pacific coast when this road shall be constructed. The
inexhaustible gold mines, or placers of California, will no longer
be accessible only to the more robust, resolute, or desperate part
of our population, and who may be already well enough off to pay
their passage by sea, or provide an outfit for an overland travel of
two and three thousand miles. Enterprising young men all over the
country, who can command the pittance of forty or fifty dollars to
pay their railroad fare; heads of families who have the misfortune
to be poor, but spirit and energy enough to seek comfort and
independence by labor, will no longer be restrained by the necessity
of separating themselves from their families, but have it in their
power, with such smal