San Francisco Daily Alta California, May 7, 1860

The contraction of every policy of our government to the four year's scope of a presidential term, is amusingly illustrated in the present "masterly inactivity" of the Democratic journals throughout our State, in their uncertainty as to the issues which are to be presented to the country by the combined wisdom and policy of the Charleston Convention. While the journals are quiet, the politicians of the party are gathered near the telegraph offices to catch the first notes which will be flashed across the wires from the Pony Express, painfully anxious to know if they shall roar in deep bass for squatter sovereignty, or pipe in shrill treble for State's rights. Not a plank of the platform can be guessed at, not the slightest knowledge of who is to be the leader of the Democratic hosts, and have a master hand in the policy and well-being of our country for the next four years, until the pony and his travel-worn rider drop their burden at the first telegraph station. We have no certainty our State's claims will receive consideration, faithful as she has been to the Democratic party, and are just as sure the political leaders will be as earnest and zealous in their efforts for its success if every claim of the State is ignored. Our country is now old enough to have settled some points of policy, on which business can be insured, stability and labor with the investment of capital guaranteed return. Our population has become crowded in the cities, and laborers pushed from manufactures into the tillage of the soil, until the west, with teeming wealth of undeveloped mines and water power, is in reality poor from a plethoric agricultural production. The Mormon question is unsettled, and every overland route liable to be cut off by Danite marauders, the moment our troops are withdrawn from Utah. Votes for present party purposes are more desirable than development of the resources of the country. Party tactics more important than binding the extremes of the country by railroad. Whatever may be the result of the Charleston Convention, and whatever the platform instituted there or, at Chicago, we hope there is enough of National feeling left to compel the opening up at once of a central route to the Pacific, in spite of all the extremes of party feeling. While the West was rich from export resources, the clap-trap of politicians may have blinded them to their interests in common with us; but now that the granary States are comparatively poor, no party will command the Western vote which does not only promise, but fully guarantee, the immediate construction of the Pacific railroad.