the
lands to be conveyed to said companies on the completion of each section
of said road should be ten sections per mile instead of five; that only
half of the charges for transportation and service due from time to time
from the United States should be retained and applied to the advances
made to said companies by the Government, thus obliging immediate
payment to its debtor of the other half of said charges, and that the
lien of the United States to secure the reimbursement of the amount
advanced to said companies in bonds, which lien was declared by the law
of 1862 to constitute a first mortgage upon all the property of said
companies, should become a junior lien and be subordinated to a mortgage
which the companies were by the amendatory act authorized to execute
to secure bonds which they might from time to time issue in sums not
exceeding the amount of the United States bonds which should be advanced
to them.

The immense advantages to the companies of this amendatory act are
apparent; and in these days we may well wonder that even the anticipated
public importance of the construction of these roads induced what must
now appear to be a rather reckless and unguarded appropriation of the
public funds and the public domain.

Under the operation of these laws the principal of the bonds which
have been advanced is $64,023,512, as given in the reports of the
commissioners; the interest to November 1, 1887, is calculated
to be $76,024,206.58, making an aggregate at the date named of
$140,047,718.58. The interest calculated to the maturity of the bonds
added to the principal produces an aggregate of $178,884,759.50.
Against these amounts there has been repaid by the companies the sum
of $30,955,039.61.

It is almost needless to state that the companies have availed
themselves to the utmost extent of the permission given them to issue
their bonds and to mortgage their property to secure the payment of the
same, by an incumbrance having preference to the Government's lien and
precisely equal to it in amount.

It will be seen that there was available for the building of each mile
of these roads $16,000 of United States bonds, due in thirty years, with
6 per cent interest; $16,000 in bonds of the companies, secured by a
first mortgage on all their property, and ten sections of Government
land, to say nothing of the stock of the companies.

When the relations created between the Government and these companies by
the le