I Take This Statement From An
Article In The Times, In Which The Question Of The Finances Of The
United States Is Handled.
But our population in 1796 was only
sixteen millions.
I estimate the population of the Northern section
of the United States, as the States will be after the war, at
twenty-two millions. In the article alluded to, these Northern
Americans are now stated to be twenty millions. If then we, in
1796, could pay fourteen millions a year with a population of
sixteen millions, the United States, with a population of twenty or
twenty-two millions, will be able to pay the sixteen or seventeen
millions sterling of interest which will become due from them, if
their circumstances of payment are as good as were ours. They can
do that, and more than that, if they have the same means per man as
we had. And as the means per man resolves itself at last into the
labor per man, it may be said that they can pay what we could pay,
if they can and will work as hard as we could and did work. That
which did not crush us will not crush them, if their future energy
be equal to our past energy.
And on this question of energy I think that there is no need for
doubt. Taking man for man and million for million, the Americans
are equal to the English in intellect and industry. They create
wealth, at any rate, as fast as we have done.
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