No One
Can As Yet Conjecture When The War May Be Over, Or What Collateral
Expenses May Attend Its Close.
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.
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