It May Be The Case That The
Government, In Fixing Some Boundary Between The Future United States
And The Future
Southern Confederacy, will be called on to advance a
very large sum of money as compensation for slaves who shall
Have
been liberated in the border States, or have been swept down South
into the cotton regions with the retreating hordes of the Southern
army. The total of the bill cannot be reckoned up while the work is
still unfinished. But, after all, that question as to the amount of
the bill is not to us the question of the greatest interest.
Whether the debt shall amount to two, or three, or even to four
hundred millions sterling; whether it remain fixed at its present
modest dimensions, or swell itself out to the magnificent
proportions of our British debt; will the resources of the country
enable it to bear such a burden? Will it be found that the
Americans share with us that elastic power of endurance which has
enabled us to bear a weight that would have ruined any other people
of the same number? Have they the thews and muscles, the energy and
endurance, the power of carrying which we possess? They have got
our blood in their veins, and have these qualities gone with the
blood? It is of little avail either to us or to the truth that we
can show some difference between our position and their position
which may seem to be in our favor. They doubtless could show other
points of difference on the other side. With us, in the early years
of this century, it was a contest for life and death, in which we
could not stop to count the cost - in which we believed that we were
fighting for all that we cared to call our own, and in which we were
resolved that we would not be beaten as long as we had a man to
fight and a guinea to spend. Fighting in this mind we won. Had we
fought in any other mind I think I may say that we should not have
won. To the Americans of the Northern States this also is a contest
for life and death. I will not here stay to argue whether this need
have been so. I think they are right; but this at least must be
accorded to them - that, having gone into this matter of civil war,
it behoves them to finish it with credit to themselves. There are
many Englishmen who think that we were wrong to undertake the French
war; but there is, I take it, no Englishman who thinks that we ought
to have allowed ourselves to be beaten when we had undertaken it.
To the Americans it is now a contest of life and death. They also
cannot stop to count the cost, They also will go on as long as they
have a dollar to spend or a man to fight.
It appears that we were paying fourteen millions a year interest on
our national debt in the year 1796.
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