The next measure which appears indispensable to secure internal tranquillity in the empire is, to make a very considerable government grant, to enable the railway companies to complete the principal lines now on foot, but still in an unfinished state. Every consideration of justice, expedience, and necessity, calls for such a grant. Many of these railways can be completed in no other way. Their directors have already borrowed all the money on the security of the undertaking which the law allows (a third;) and the diminished means and straitened credit of the shareholders, for the present at least, has disabled them from answering any further calls. The works must stand still, a deformity and a disgrace to the country, if government relief is not afforded. Parliament has declared the expedience of these lines by having passed the bills for their formation. Most, perhaps all, of these would have been completed ere this, had not the fetters imposed on the currency by the Bank Charter Act so straitened credit that it has become impossible. The very _name_ of government being willing to advance a certain sum, as two or three millions, to enable these companies to resume their work, would so restore and vivify credit, that it is probable a very small part of the sum voted would be taken up by these undertakings. The restoration of private credit, by such a measure on the part of government, would unlock the immense coffers of wealth which now, from the prostration of private credit, lie unemployed in the country. For, such is the strange and anomalous condition in which we stand, that while our streets are crowded with thousands and hundreds of thousands of unemployed labourers and artisans seeking employment, our banks and insurance offices are crowded with thousands and hundreds of thousands of unemployed capital seeking investment. Yet these two superfluities cannot reach or relieve each other. Why? Because credit and currency are wanting to enable the one to pass over to the other. Let government lay the foundation of the bridge, and the communication, to mutual advantage, will soon be restored.