capacity? We opine not. The undersigned might go on at length and show the iniquity of this measure, but the above will suffice. He might go on and show that the amount Major Birney collected is but a few dollars more than the sum he claims. The debate will show this fact.

In conclusion, the undersigned recommends that the bill be negatived. All of which is submitted.

J. BRUSH.

MEMORIAL.

RAILROAD FROM THE PACIFIC TO THE VALLEY OF THE MISSISSIPPI.

Chas. Bond, Col. D. Turner, C. L. Heiser, L. Hermann, J. L. Folsom, F. Billings, B. C. Saunders, C. J. Brenham and Thos. C. Hambly, the committee appointed at a public meeting of the citizens of San Francisco and its vicinity, convened at the Exchange, for all nations, on Friday Evening, the 28th of November, 1851, to memorialize Congress upon the subject of constructing a Railway from the Pacific to the valley of the Mississippi, do now respectfully report the following memorial.

To the State of California, though the youngest of the confederacy, has it fallen, to give conception to an enterprize, the grandest, the most extended, and in all probability, the most useful of all public works which have at any period occupied the attention of any government-that of a railway from the Pacific coast to the valley of the Mississippi, an enterprise, the cost of which, although probably four times that of any known similar work, yet sinks into insignificance when contrasted with its extent and its benefits.

The history of California as a State, is eminently peculiar to herself-it has no parallel, either ancient or modern. Her origin, like that of the fabled goddess of wisdom, was without anticipation. Never in her minority, she has known nothing of territorial tutelage, and never has been embarrassed with the swaddling bands of territorial government, and full grown at birth, she took her stand in the Union with all the maturity of a long established organization.

Just as peculiar as her history, is her condition; with a climate as varied as a meridian of longitude, she is exempt from disease; with a soil as fruitful as that of the tropics, her agriculture has scarce commenced-a whole nation of actual laborers, she has yet no manufactures; and with wealth that surpasses fiction, she has neither canals nor railways; and yet, paradoxical as it may seem, without the aid of government expenditures, or the combined