It is none the pleasanter thought to them because they have no time to talk about it, that the great highway of the continent has been left, _pendente lite_, in the hands of squabbling speculators, and that personal recriminations bar the progress of our commerce between sea and sea. The indifference of our public trustees to the disgraceful controversies which have embarrassed work on the eastern end of the line is itself not a disgrace only because human power is limited to the care of one great matter at a time. The first Congress that meets under the olive of an honorable peace must at once take the Pacific Railroad into the Nation's hands, and prosecute it as the Nation's matter, with a liberal-mindedness learned from the conduct of a great war. Next to the salvation of the Union, the completion of the Pacific Road most fully justifies prompt action and comparative disregard of expenditure. It is not our purpose, nor is this the place, to dictate to our legislators either the precise line of their own action or that of the road. It is still proper to say that the arrangements thus far entered into with private contractors have proved inadequate to the accomplishment and unworthy of the character of the enterprise. Whatever may be the details of the improved plan, it must embrace a sterner national surveillance over the execution of the project, and a direct national assumption of its prime responsibility. It is a mistaken notion to suppose that the Pacific-Railroad question rests on the same principles as that of our minor internal improvements. It calls for no reopening of the long-hushed controversy between Democracy and Whiggism. The best thinkers of the day are universally agreed to deprecate legislation in every case where private enterprise will do its office. No good political economist approves the emasculation of private effort by Government subsidy. The people are averse to statutory crutches and go-carts, wherever it is possible for them to walk alone. We feel distrust of the railroad which asks monopoly-privileges. The sight of a Governmental prop under any ostensibly commercial concern warns an American from its neighborhood. He has learned that true prestige lies with the people,--that there is no vital warmth in official patronage. Even within the memory of young men a great change for the better has taken place in our commercial manliness. Out first-class public enterprises blush to take Government help, as their directors might blush, if at the close of an interview Mr. Lincoln "tipped" them like school-boys with a holiday handful of greenbacks. There is no doubt that the ideal principle of democratic progress demands the absolute non-interference of Government in all enterprises whose benefit accrues to a part of its citizens, or which can be stimulated into life by the spontaneous operation of popular interest.