GENTLEMEN:

Editors Gazelle & Times: July 1847.

I have been much surprised to see an extract from the Democratic Review "on the Origin of England's National Debt," copied into your paper without comment, which usually implies an endorsement of the doctrines contained in it. The writer, advising and predicting the repudiation of England's public debt, insists on the non-obligation of that debt, because a great part of it was contracted by a former generation that of William Pitt — and he says "Of 30 generations which passed away from the Norman Conquest down to the French War, each one had as much right to borrow as that of Mr. Pitt, and nearly every one had as much necessity." At first blush this would seem to argue that a government has no right to borrow money at all, since every loan must be raised at some particular time, in some particular generation. But he can hardly mean this; it is too great an absurdity even for the Democratic Review to advocate. He must mean that they have no right to borrow for longer than a generation, that is, as he explains it, for 22 years.

Now, gentlemen, it seems to me that this plan of substituting for our conception of a Nation and a State that of a succession of generations, is not only one of the most disorganizing and ruinous in practice ever devised, but also one of the most illusory and intangible in theory. What is a generation? What permanent ties unite the Americans of this generation (humanly speaking) except such as are derived from their being members of a common Country and State? Take away this great bond and what have you to limit or define your generation? The writer can suggest nothing except his period of 22 years. 22 years from when, and to when? From to-day or tomorrow, or last year, or the time when the present voters or the majority of them came of age? How are we to draw the line between this generation and the last or the

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next? We are the governing generation now. Those who are 15 or 20 years our juniors will be the governing generation when that time shall have elapsed. What right have we to bind them for 2 years or 7 years any more than for 20 or 30? The very term generation suggests ideas of what is fleeting and transitory and unstable; and the moment we attempt to carry out the general notion into particulars, all is confusion and incongruity.

On the other hand our conceptions of a State and a Nation are fixed and real. The term Nation involves physical and moral peculiarities, a definite locality, generally a peculiar language, often a peculiar religion. The term State suggests the ideas of law and government, order and justice, treaties, courses of policy, improvements carried on from one age to another, all the things that are most grave and sacred and permanent in men's eyes. A state has a personality about it which you seek in vain to attach to a generation. You may open an account current with a government; you can't with a generation. True, a people may discover themselves to be wiser than their fathers. They may think, nay, they may know that in certain circumstances they would have managed their affairs more wisely. And so, too, a man may grow wiser and find that he has entered into indiscreet engagements and borrowed imprudently. But does this exonerate him from his engagements, I do not say in law, but in conscience and honor? He is still the same man, though his moral and mental nature may have been enlightened, and he is bound by his own acts. Similarly a people may be bound to pay the debts of their ancestors, even though they have reason to doubt the policy and justice of having originally contracted these debts.

So much for the general question; but the specific instance under discussion, demands more particular consideration. The assertion that nearly all the generations before Mr. Pitt had as much necessity to borrow money as he had, is just on a par with the usual impudent mendacity of our Radical scriblers. What the London Examiner said of O'Connell, is most strictly applicable to these men. Their moral nature has become so warped that they really do not know what truth is. With them it means whatever makes for their side, and by falsehood they understand whatever makes for the other side. Hence

they unscrupulously and invariably adapt their facts to their theory; will this writer pretend to say that from the Norman conquest to the French war, the national existence of England, was at stake once every 22 years! Or will he maintain that this was not the case in Pitt's time, when she had to fight single-handed against a continent? The exertions and sacrifices which the Englishmen of that day made, showed their appreciation of the danger which threatened them. Do men pay 10 per cent property-tax, without a pressing necessity? Does the Democratic Review suppose that every sovereign or premier between William the Conqueror, and George III. could have levied such a tax? I should like to see our good Democrats called on to pay 10 per cent propertytax on account of Mr. Polk's Mexican War! Those Englishmen did not spare their own shoulders and they had a right to impose a burden on future generations, because future generations were interested in the struggle then pending. It is a vile slander to say that Pitt and his generation were unjust to, or careless about, their posterity. They were most mindful of the interests of that posterity. They took care that they should be free Englishmen, not slaves to Napoleon and his dynasty; enlightened Protestants and not Papists or Infidels. The continuance of such blessings, the deliverance from such evils was cheaply purchased by the addition of a few millions or many millions of taxes. No, gentlemen, "every generation from the Norman Conquest to the French War," had not the same right to borrow as that of Mr. Pitt, for none of them had the same necessity.

Let us suppose for a moment that our position and that of Mexico in the present war were partially interchanged that our territory was threatened with invasion, our armies with defeat; that there was a chance of our country being subjugated by Santa Anna and of our Protestant Ministers having Popish Priests set over them. Should we hesitate about any means of preserving our independence? Should we scruple to borrow money in any quarter to any amount that might be requisite for carrying on the war? Should we shrink from subsidizing foreign powers? And then suppose the philosopher of the Democratic Review to interpose with "No, you must not burden posterity! If you borrow this money your

grandchildren will have to pay double taxes for the interest of it." With what indignation should we repel his absurdities! "Miserable mole that you are," we might exclaim, "the question is not whether our grandchildren shall pay a few hundred dollars more or less taxes, but whether they should have any voice in paying their own taxes at all; whether they shall have a country and free institutions, or be the servants of strangers. Away with such short-sighted folly!"

The English people enjoy the glory of having resisted a continent like Europe and overcame a man like Napoleon. It was not to be expected that they should have this glory for nothing, nor are they unwilling to pay the price for it. They are not so foolish and so wicked as the Democratic Review hopes or believes them to be.

There is yet, however, one alternative which I had nearly forgotten. He of the Democratic may say that there is no objection to a nation borrowing all they can in such a crisis, but that the next generation may repudiate the debt if they see fit. But this course will be found on examination to be equally unjust to their ultimate posterity. For repudiation though it may answer very well for the first time, is not a game to be played twice. If the second generation repudiates what the first borrowed, the third will not find it easy to borrow again should they require it ever so much. And what more mortifiying position can we imagine that of a generation which, with every honest intention and prospective means, finds itself so damned by the bad faith of its predecessors as to be incapable of obtaining credit? Thus in whatever light we view the question, it appears most clearly that the party which maintains the obligations of a State is the one truly mindful of the interests of posterity.

TO the Honorable Horace Mann:

SIR,

Since even under the aristocratic governments of the Old World, a cat is proverbially permitted to look at a king, much more, in this land of democracy, may a private individual address without previous introduction

a Member of Congress. Undeniable is it, that our private individuals have not been slow to use and abuse this privilege, and numbers of them make it their business to bother public men on all occasions, in or out of season. Nor should I have been willing to follow so many bad examples, had you not, in some sense, yourself given the provocation.

Some two months ago I happened to see in the Literary World, a brief and complimentary notice of your "Thoughts for a Young Man," which mentioned your holding up Stephen Girard as an example, and John Jacob Astor as a warning. The latter gentleman was my maternal grandfather, and having been accustomed to look upon him during his life, and to regard his memory since his death, with a considerable amount of respect, I naturally felt a little curious to see what he had done to be held up as a warning, particularly what legal or moral crime he had committed to make you put him in the same category with the ferocious despot Nicholas, or that prince of swindlers, the ex-railroad king, George Hudson - as the same journal informed me you did. True, in the course of twelve years or more, during which time I had sufficient opportunities of becoming acquainted with his life and character, I had never seen or heard anything to induce the suspicion of such a probability; nevertheless, as it is notorious that we often learn a great deal about ourselves and our private affairs from strangers, it seemed not impossible that some such information might be obtained in the present instance.

Of Stephen Girard, I knew only that he had been the richest man, or one of the richest men, in the country; that he was a Frenchman by birth, but had lived most of his life a very solitary one, without near relations or friends in Philadelphia; that he left the greater part of his fortune to establish a college for orphans, into which no minister of any religious denomination was ever to set foot, under any pretext or circumstance whatsoever which always struck me as a very ingenious contrivance for the increase of knowledge without virtue; and that the college had been but lately opened, after a delay of some fifteen years. Nor did I gain any further details from your "Thoughts." But I did learn the gravamen of Mr. Astor's offence in your