That all sums due to the United States from any of said companies respectively, whether payable presently or not, and all sums required to be paid to the United States or into the Treasury, or into said sinking fund under this act, or under the acts hereinbefore referred to, or otherwise, are hereby declared to be a lien upon all the property, estate, rights, and franchises of every description granted or conveyed by the United States to any of said companies respectively or jointly, and also upon all the estate and property, real, personal, and mixed, from whatever source derived, subject to any lawfully prior or paramount mortgage lien, or claim thereon.[571] A comparison of the Thurman law with the Act of 1862 shows that the later law expressly extended the lien of the subsidy bonds to all Pacific railroad property “from whatever source derived,” instead of limiting the lien to property “in consideration of which said bonds may be issued.” It does not appear that this change was particularly considered in the debates on the Thurman bill. Mr. Thurman himself did not mention Section 9 in his opening address, and while members of the Senate discussed at length the power of Congress to alter, amend, or repeal the Act of 1862, they usually had in mind the sinking fund provisions of the Thurman law and not those relating to the lien of the subsidy bonds. The exception to this statement is to be found in a colloquy between Mr. Dawes, of Massachusetts, and Mr. Edmunds, of Vermont. Mr. Dawes called attention on April 3 to the sweeping nature of the amendment contained in Section 9. He was of the opinion that in 1862 Congress never undertook to put a mortgage on anything except that which they granted to the railroad. Under the Thurman Act, however, he understood that all subsequently acquired property was also to be pledged, with the effect, Mr. Dawes added, that, among other results, all payment of dividends would become illegal. To this criticism Senator Edmunds replied that the Act of 1862 already subjected all the property of the Pacific railroads to the lien of the subsidy bonds. It was the view of the Senator from Vermont that the words “in consideration of which said bonds may be issued” did not have the limiting effect in the Act of 1862 which Mr. Dawes ascribed to them, but rather that they conveyed the idea, with other words in the same clause, that the Secretary of the Treasury might from time to time issue bonds of the United States in consideration of the fact, which the law declared, that every particle of the property of the Pacific companies, real and personal, franchises, tolls, and everything else, were the security upon which the bonds were to be a lien.[572] Subsequent discussion did not serve to clear up the differences in interpretation brought out in the Congressional debate, but the later decision of the Supreme Court showed that, in the principal matter at issue, Mr. Dawes was right.