We have no words but of commendation for the noble work which your State is pushing with such energy to open a still shorter route to the Hudson. We have no feelings of jealousy toward the new route, because it terminates in another city than Albany; a healthy rivalry will do more than moral suasion, to wake up the old route from that lethargy which seems so near akin to death. Had the Hoosac Tunnel been completed twelve years ago, we have reason to believe it probable that the people of Massachusetts alone would have saved an amount in the way of cheap transportation, nearly if not quite sufficient to equal its cost. We have spoken more freely in this paper than might be considered becoming in us, but for the fact that in the day of its need, Albany, along with Massachusetts, came to the aid of the Western Railroad. And now that we are suffering so much from its insufficiency to meet the public want, we trust the presentation of these views and facts will not be regarded as obtrusive, but rather as properly coming from those, who, with you, aided to produce a common benefit, and are now suffering with you from a common cause." The cost of the whole work was estimated by the commissioners in their first report, at $5,719,330, the estimate being based upon ordinary labor at one dollar a day, and of materials at a corresponding rate. Nothing has yet occurred to invalidate this estimate, excepting the advance of the cost of material and labor, an incidental misfortune common to every public, as well as private enterprise, requiring labor and material, which has been prosecuted during the last three years. It is certain that these high rates will greatly decline, perhaps nearly to their former level within a year; but admitting that the Commissioners' estimate should be swelled through these incidental causes to the sum of eight millions, would such an increase of expense justify the abandonment of this great enterprise, upon which so much has already been expended, and at the very period in its progress when the most formidable obstacles in its way have been surmounted, and its success become a certainty? Had the Western Railroad been utterly destroyed last year by a rebel raid, as were some Southern roads by the march of Sherman, or by any conceivable cause, would the consideration of twenty-five, or thirty, or even forty millions, prevent its being rebuilt at once? Why then should two millions stand in the way of the Tunnel line, which is now a greater necessity than the Western road was at the time of its construction?