24 
CONCLUSION OF INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
They are bound to that distant population by every impulse of generosity and by every tie of 
the heart. The wealth of the single isolated and unprotected State, brought home to them by 
the husbands, the fathers, and the brothers of virtue, has permeated every hamlet of every 
hill-side of America. 
They feel that, in these years of tearing down and building up, this undertaking need not be 
postponed or confounded with the obsolete traditions of the achievements of the past. Standing 
so sturdily upon the present, and gazing into the future, they have long ceased to cling too stead¬ 
fastly to the tottering remnants of the past. 
Of energies too vast to be always within the control of legislative restriction, they have never 
yet failed to respect the government which they have of themselves created. 
To the representatives of such a people, no plea of temporary expediency, no mere anticipa¬ 
tion of the advantages to accrue by the extension of the Pacific railroad, will justify the slight¬ 
est infringement of a single provision of the instrument whereby so heroic a mortal destiny has 
been achieved as the present welfare of this republic. And where the views submitted for the 
elucidation of this report have reached the style of argument, it has been from the desire to 
make the engineering difficulties of this question, as affected by constitutional requirements, 
definitely and perfectly understood. 
Any competent engineer of even ten years’ practice in railroad-building, would have offered 
the same conclusions. 
I have the honor of assuming that, if a statement were required from the scientific depart¬ 
ment to which the conduct of the Pacific railroad explorations was confided, it will not be 
found seriously to conflict with the conclusions herewith submitted. 
