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Amount brought forward, $89,870,859

the average peace expenditure of the War Department, we have the sum of

We have for the extra cost,

$8,500,000

41,281,636

Deducting this from the total war expenditure of the year ending
30th June, 1847,
The expenditures for the year 1847-8, and 1848-9, must yet be conjectural; but as
additional forces are asked for, it is quite within limits to assume that the extra
war expenditures for each of these years, will at least equal that of 1846–7,
which would add to our column

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We have still to add the navy expenditures, which, for the year ending June, 1847,

were

32,781,217

65,562,434

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Assuming that for each of the next two years, the extra expenditures will be the same, we have to add

According to this showing, such is the direct money cost of this war, over and
above, be it remembered, the ordinary peace expenditure for army and navy,
calenlating that it will last till June, 1849, thus completing three years.
The actual debt that will be entailed upon the country, as shown above, will be
Now the whole debt of the War of Independence, which lasted seven years, and
made us a nation, was, as ascertained in 1790, foreign debt,

Domestic debt,

Making an excess of cost of the Mexican over the revolutionary war,

There is yet another source of expenditure to be added to this amount, which will swell the aggregate very much. According to existing laws, all the volunteer forces, and all the regulars, who shall serve to the end of the war, or be honorably discharged before, and the widows or children of those who die in the service, are entitled to 160 acres of land, or an equivalent in money of $100, for each soldier. As the provisions of this law will undoubtedly be made retroactive, so as to include those in service before its adoption, it is quite reasonable to estimate at 70,000 the number to whom these provisions will be applicable: we find, then,taking the money commutation as the measure, an addition of $7,000,000 to the direct cost of this war.

And then comes the consequential cost, inestimable as yet, but enormous. The pension rolls alone will be more than trebled; the claims for property lost, for havoc, and for the nameless contingencies which attend on war, will be entailed upon generation after generation.

We have referred at the outset of these

|

12,556,871 60,219,022

1,573,819

3,147,638

$192,915,967

89,870,859

72,775,893 $17,094,966

remarks to the case of Amy Dardin's horse, impressed in Virginia for the public service, during the revolutionary war, and compensation for which, after being refused by Congress after Congress, and being still as regularly pressed upon each succeeding Congress, as if no decision had been made as regularly referred, reported upon, and debated as though it were at each time a new case-was finally made within the last half-dozen years-the discussion having cost more probably than would have paid for all the horses in the revolutionary army.

We still at each session of Congress hear of claims preferred for horses lost in the Florida war; and while we are writing, we see in the report of the proceedings of the Senate of the United States, that a bill was introduced on the 6th January, to "allow further time for satisfying claims for bounty lands for military services in the late war with Great Britain," now some thirty-three years past.

Of this bill, Mr. Sevier, a Senator from Arkansas, said: "Pass such a law as this, and no man knows how many old claims will be brought forward, which have b

heretofore rejected by Congress. I believe we have already paid more land claims for military services than we ever had troops in the field. I hope, at least, that some data will be procured from the land office to show how many claims are yet outstanding. This bill, I suppose, is to pay all the old Virginia claims.' What distant age could, after this example, hope to see the end of claims for military bounty land that will spring from this Mexican war?

But keeping our attention fixed on the direct money cost of the war, if it should last until June, 1849, which will be, at least, $132,000,000, we shall have a war debt upon the country of $89,870,859, as a contrast with our position before the war, when the debt was $17,788,799, making the aggregate outstanding debt on July 1st, 1849, $109,659,658. This is a larger sum, with a single exception, than this nation ever before owed.

At the close of the war with England in 1816, on 1st January of that year, our debt was $127,334,033. For twenty years that debt hung upon the country, absorbing all its surpluses, stopping all appropriations for useful and enduring improvements, and forever standing in the way of every generous impulse or proposal for expenditures that would be reproductive. At length, however, the whole debt was paid, and the Secretary of the Treasury, in his report of February, 1836, to Congress, after congratulating them on such a result -the complete redemption, principal and interest, of the whole national debt-recommended, as though after such experience we would never, except in the extremest emergency, resort again to such a costly system of obtaining money, as running in debt for it, that the whole machinery of the Sinking Fund and the Commissioners thereof should be dispensed with.

And costly, indeed, is every such system of national borrowing; for it appears, in our own case, that from 31st December, 1789, to 31st December, 1835, the sum paid by the United States in the shape of interest on the public debt, amounted to $157,629,950! The principal of the debt, which was paid in full during the same time, was $257,452,083; so that in this period, the pee paid for the hire of money ds! of its whole amount, ng the principal in full.

nearl b

The aggregate of principal and interest paid by the labor and industry of the United States in these forty-five years, was four hundred and fifteen millions of dollars! of which the large proportion above stated was for interest, which eats out the substance of borrowing peoples, as of borrowing individuals.

Nor is it only on the score of economy that the policy of borrowing for national expenditures, which, like those of war, are wholly unproductive, and bring no return in money value at least, is to be condemned. The people that are called upon to pay as they go, are no more likely than provident individuals, who practice upon that wise and honest precept,to commit wanton follies or mischievous extravagancies.

In a republic especially like ourswhere the people are the governing power, but where, too often, the people are sadly mis-governed by those who profess to be their best friends, and to have the most abiding confidence in their wisdom and justice-in such a polity of government, a resort to loan, treasury notes, or any other form of borrowing, at the outset and for the support of a war, of which the time, the manner and the occasion were wholly of our own choosing, seems to us worse than a mistake; it is a crime against the people.

Either the war is popular, or it is not. It is approved by the nation, or it is not. It has the sanction of those whose votes give and withdraw political station, or it has not.

In the one case, the war, as being in accordance with the popular sentiment, would be sustained; in the other it would be condemned. The most direct, unerring and comprehensive mode of determining this issue, is by the argumentum ad crumenam, the appeal to the pocket.

If the taxable people of the United States really think that our quarrel with Mexico was unavoidable, that the war was proper and expedient, and ought to be still further prosecuted, they will not object, as honest and just citizens, to contribute from their earnings or property, whatever may be necessary to carry it on vigorously and successfully.

If, on the other hand, they should believe that this war might have been avoided without loss of honor, or danger to the safety or to the integrity of our territory,

including, since now we must, Texas to the Nueces, they have a right to be heard in the premises to make known their will on the subject, and to cause their will to be respected and obeyed; and in no other manner or way so intelligibly, so unmistakably, as by the visit of the tax-gatherer, | can the question be put home to the business and bosom of every family.

At town meetings in the precincts of the court-house in the heat and hurry and unscrupulous assertions of the election contest-plain and simple Truth has little chance of fair play. Power, "which is forever stealing from the many to the few," has so many advocates to uphold all its excesses-and war itself always adds such a horde of hungry speculators and contractors to the ordinary retinue of power-that the simple citizen, standing up only for what appears to him right, and anxious to save his country from evil ways, and himself and property from needless expense, has little chance of being heard or listened to, amid the deafening huzzas of the out-and-out supporters of power, the glowing eulogists of war, so long as they themselves are safe from its perils the needy and supple worshippers of the hand which dispenses contracts, commissions, and the countless patronage which marches in the train of war.

Hence, even a well-meaning and intelligent people, always more occupied with their own daily cares than with the cares of State, may be readily misled and deluded, by interested voices and manœuvres, into the support of measures which, if thoroughly understood by them, would be condemned. But there can be no false gloss put upon the visit of the tax-gatherer; and demagogue tongues, that "can wheedle with the devil," are powerless in the attempt to wheedle the tax-payer into indifference about that portion of his personal and political liabilities and obligations, or to convert into a "privilege," what in his eye seems an unwelcome exercise of "power." He will scan inexorably the motives for such an exercise of authority, on the part of those who, with affected humility, call themselves the "servants of the people." He will follow the dollars which he draws reluctantly from his pocket into that of the smirking official's deputy, who does him the honor to transfer

them to his own; he will ruminate about what portion will remain in the pocket of this first receiver, and so on through the pockets of all the various receivers who handle his dollars before they reach the grand depository, or iron-chambered Sub-Treasury; and then, relapsing into thought about the new plough, it may be, he had laid out to buy with the dollars thus taken from him in the name of the people! or the wedding frock to the cherished daughter he was about to givein marriage, or some new books with which he was anxious to gratify the longings of an ingenuous and studious son, for knowledge beyond the reach of his village school or humble paternal roof;—thus ruminating, reflecting, regretting, think you that man will take up with mere words about the justice, or expediency, or necessity of the measure which has dashed from him such cherished hopes? Think you he will be content to forego the honest gratification of parental affection, or parental pride, or the expenditures called for by the wants of his household or his farm, and not know the reason why? or be content with other than a good reason? Will such a man think himself repaid for such disappointment, by being told that it is our "destiny" that has led us into war with Mexico; that the superiority of our Anglo-Saxon blood impels us to overrun and thus refine and civilize the feebler and inferior race dwelling on our border; or, in fine, by the assurance that we have in the contest displayed such remarkable warlike propensities and capacities, that we shall thereby become a terror to all other nations, which otherwise might be tempted to do us wrong? Nothing of all this will satisfy our inquirer, even in the economical point of view-much less will it satisfy him in the moral point of view; and when both the pocket and the conscience of the constituent cry out against political measures, those measures would soon be changed.

It is precisely in contemplation of the effect of such an agency upon the interests or the principles of a people, that we say that a direct tax is the true test of the real popularity of the parties which require such a resort; and to such a test all really believe in the professions th of trust in the honesty, the p

and intelligence of the masses, should be willing to resort; and just in proportion as it is found that the instigators of war measures shrink from all legislation which shall invite the co-operation of the people in these measures by direct taxation, just in such proportion is it obvious, either that there is no real confidence in the necessity or expediency of the measures themselves, or none in the patriotism and intelligence of the constituency. Such is exactly the position of this Administration in regard to the Mexican war. They affect to think it a popular war. They affect to believe that the voice of the country is still with them, as well in its conduct as in its commencement; and mistaking the moderation—almost amounting in our eyes to pusillanimity—which, where it cannot praise, refrains from condemnation, they hug themselves with the notion, or would fain be understood as doing so, that the overwhelming tide of a popular war is sustaining and bearing them onward. But they are most cautious to abstain from all propositions that may bring these visions to the test of reality; and seek all the resources of the war by borrowing on the credit of the present, leaving to the future, which will be nothing to them, to redeem the debt in the contracting of which they had no voice, and the benefits from which are to them absolutely null.

It is no answer to this view to say, that the President has recommended, as a war tax, a duty on tea and coffee; since, even if granted by Congress, it would be classed among indirect contributions, of which the payment is not tangibly brought home to the consumer, as in the case of a direct contribution, by actual payment to the tax-gatherer.

To the reflecting mind, indeed, which habitually connects cause and effect, it might well be, as was strongly put not many days ago in one of our newspapers, that, as the American mother put to her lips the cup, of which the contents were taxed, to enable her countrymen to press the cup of bitterness, desolation and blood to the lips of Mexican mothers-the reflection might be feelingly brought home to her and her household, that what to them was only an additional money cost, was to others in a distant land, with feelings and Tections warm and gushing as their own,

the fruitful source of privation, despair and death. But to the greater number, an indirect contribution would recall little, if at all, the cause for which it was levied, and hence produce little moral effect.

But if there be any truth or sincerity in the theories of our polity, which assume for the people, not only all power, but competent knowledge, intelligence and patriotism, it must follow that they should be dealt frankly with on such a question as a foreign war-that there should be no disguise or evasion about it—but that the case should be plainly laid before them, to the end that they may determine, with a full understanding of the consequences, for or against the measure proposed. Not only is it a duty on the part of governors and legislators toward their constituents, to deal thus frankly with them on questions of such deep moment, but it is the right of the constituent to be so dealt by; and if the people properly appreciated their own power and interests, they would be foremost to insist, that government expenditures in general, but especially all expenditures for war, should be furnished by direct taxation; for direct taxation alone will keep alive that perpetual vigilance, which is not less the condition of fiscal economy than of political liberty. The people, therefore, renounce and suffer to pass into abeyance, their most efficient security against wasteful mismanagement and corrupt ambition, when they acquiesce in any other mode of raising a public revenue, than that which would bring home annually to every taxable citizen, the personal cost of government to himself and his family.

Can any one believe, that if the question of this war had been plainly put to the people of the United States, with the condition that its cost should be borne by the generation that was to make it, that they would have consented to its being undertaken? If not, by what right is it undertaken? By what right continued? Why, under the letter of the law, shall tens of thousands of our citizens, and tens of millions of our treasure, be still demanded for the purpose of war; when the governing power for the time being of the nation, dares not put to the people, in the only way practicable, the issue of continued war, with all its moral and political danger, and

its personal and pecuniary loss, or a relinquishment of further conquests, and the withdrawal of our force behind the line of frontier with which ourselves would be content?

To these questions, and others of like nature, which will be asked, the Congress now in session must answer make. To them is assigned the trust and responsibility of deciding for the people, or rather between the people and the executive government. No one looks, no one asks, no one would wish, that anything be refused to the President, which the true interests and safety of the country may, require which the honor of our arms, the common honor of the republic, may demand; but there is a deep and earnest conviction gathering strength every hour, that the war was unnecessarily, at least, begun on our part, and should then without further delay be terminated. There is another feeling no less strong in considerate minds, that every additional day and week of war impairs the ground-work and foundation of our free institutions. It is not that any direct assault upon them is apprehended, from victorious generals returning from foreign conquests, with the spoils of nations in their hands, and obedient legions in their train. There is no such fear, there is no ground-not yet certainly, whatever the future in the event of long-protracted foreign war might produce for any such fear; for our victorious generals have not ceased to be citizens and republicans. But in the change of character and impressions wrought upon the soldiery themselves, by familiarity with the trade of war, and the habit of lording it over subdued peoples, there is much cause for dread; for these soldiers are to return home to be citizens again, voters, politicians, and to sway as he may, each in his own sphere, the votes and opinions of others. And we who remain at homeis it not too evident, that we too are undergoing a somewhat similar change of feeling and opinions? Is it not within the experience of every one, that the appetite for land plunder, for territorial acquisition, like the fatal thirst of the dropsical patient, increases with the indulgence? "Crescit indulgens sibi dirus Hydrops Nec sitim pellit, nisi causa morbi Fugerit venis."

It is even so already, to a lamentable extent, with the people of these United States. They have indulged in the seductive luxury of extended conquests, and they thirst for more. There is no remedy, no effectual cure, but in getting rid entirely of the cause of the disease; this fatal thirst must be expelled from the system; for most true of a republic, and most applicable to our actual case, is the preceding stanza, in the same fine philosophical ode of the Roman lyric, which may be supposed apostrophizing the genius of the Republic:

"Latius regnes avidum domando
Spiritum, quam si Lybiam remotis
Gadibus jungas, et uterque Peonus
Serviat uni."

Such indeed are our legitimate triumphs, not by adding territory to territory, and causing either America to pass under our dominion, but by subjecting our grasping spirit, by giving to the world the example as well as the precepts of contented liberty, of prosperous industry, of overflowing happiness, and of equal justice within our own borders. Our propagandism should be, not by the sword, not by the gospel of gunpowder, but by the plough, the loom, the ship, the schoolhouse and the church, by equality of all before the law, by love of man, by obedience to God. Such is our high privilegewe will not say mission nor destiny, for these terms have been sadly abused, and moreover seem to imply some activity of outward effort, in the fitness of which we by no means concur. It is the silent moral influence of good institutions, producing before the eye and by the assent of all men the greatest sum of human happiness, upon which alone this people should rely for the spread of such institutions, and boasting themselves of their own liberty and freedom of action, carefully abstain from forcing even liberty upon people unwilling or unprepared to receive it.

We do not underrate the value of na

tional glory, and are ready to admit that if the spirit of this age were what was the spirit of ages that are past, and the peace of nations were only to be kept by fear, by the dread which each stands in of the other-we might perhaps admit that even at the enormous cost we have already indicated of near two hundred millions of dol

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