nues ought to be reduced, or that the aggregate of the existing revenue is either unprecedented or impoverishing, or complained of by the people, or that there is not a legitimate use for any surplus, however large, so long as there is any Government debt within call. I can not vote to change the taxes on either whisky, tobacco, or beer, except to improve and facilitate their collection or to make the revenue from them greater. But I am ready to vote to repeal or modify any tax which can be shown to cripple any industry or to be oppressive or to be unfair as between different classes of persons, different interests, or different geographical sections, provided always that the great policy of the vigorous payment of all debts within the reach of payment be substantially maintained.

PAYMENT OF THE NATIONAL DEBT.

From the North American Review, September, 1886.

It has become apparent that great interests are at work to prevent the payment of the national debt, and to permanently fasten upon us the British funding-system, of which, while it was yet in its small beginning, Lord Bolingbroke said, in 1748, that it is a "method" by which "one part of the nation is pawned to the other, with hardly any hope left of ever being redeemed." Of all the possible disasters which may happen to the country, the reversal of its traditional debt-paying policy will be one of the greatest. Nothing would more profoundly change for the worse all the principles and workings of the Government. The reasons for persevering in the extinguishment of the financial obligations of the civil war are innumerable, but within the limits of this article I can only notice briefly a few of them.

1. That debt-paying is our traditional policy will be more vividly realized from a recital of some particulars of our history in that respect. Our Government went into operation, under the present constitution, in 1789. In the enumeration, in that instrument, of the purposes for which Congress is empowered to levy taxes, the payment of the public debt comes first, and the history of that time shows that the restoration of the finances was a chief object of the new constitution. Quoting its language, the taxing power was conferred "to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare." The conduct of the generation which framed the constitution, and first administered it, is a luminous commentary upon its true meaning and intent. Within forty-four years after 1789, not only was the revolutionary

debt of $80,000,000, which was greater than that of the civil war, with proper allowances for differences of population and wealth, paid off, but also the debt of the war of 1812 and 1815 with England, and the obligation for $20,000,000 incurred in the purchase of Louisiana and Florida. It might have been said, posterity should be left to pay for the lands acquired by these purchases and falling to them as a vast inheritance, being fully one-half of the present territorial area of the republic; but not so did the fathers reason. It was their pride and glory to remove all encumbrances from the patrimony of their children. "Not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear," is the grand and noble sentiment of Washington, in that part of his farewell address in which he urged the earliest possible extinction of the debt.

In his second annual message, Mr. Jefferson advised "the payment of our public debt, and the emancipation of our posterity from that moral canker."

General Jackson, who had, in his first inaugural, declared that a national debt was "incompatible with real independence," assigned, in his fifth annual message, as a reason for rejoicing over its extinction,-"the satisfaction of bequeathing to the public servants who follow us, the rare blessing of a revenue unencumbered with any burden." In his message vetoing the United States Bank bill, he said: "Pay the national debt. Let no surplus be allowed in the Treasury. Practice the closest economy in the expenditures of the Government."

Of the seven Presidents during the forty-four years which witnessed the complete discharge of the great debts of our two wars with England, and of our territorial purchases from France and Spain, five had borne conspicuous parts in civil or military life during the revolutionary war. The last two, J. Q. Adams and General Jackson, both born in 1767, were too young to participate in the struggle; but they were close to the generation which carried it through, and thoroughly imbued with its hostility to perpetual debts and fund

mongering. All these seven Presidents, in their official addresses and in their private correspondence, insisted, from first to last, in season and out of season, that a public debt was among the greatest of public mischiefs, and that no efforts and sacrifices to get rid of it could be too great.

President Washington, in six of eight of his annual addresses to Congress, and in his farewell address to the country, gave to debt-paying the most conspicuous place in his recommendations. The elder Adams urged the payment of the revolutionary debt, and especially warned the country against imitating the funding-system of Europe.

Jefferson, in seven of his eight annual messages, classed the early and complete discharge of the debt as among the first of public duties.

Both Madison and Monroe were equally strenuous and persistent on this point. The younger Adams insisted, in his inaugural, upon the duty "to discharge, with all possible promptitude, the national debt." In his second annual message he urged "steady and inflexible perseverance" in that work, and in his third message he spoke "of the deep solicitude of our citizens of all classes" for its speedy completion.

General Jackson, who, as a candidate for the presidency, had declared, in his letter of April 26th, 1824, to Dr. Coleman, that a national debt was "a curse to a republic, inasmuch as it is calculated to raise round the administration a moneyed aristocracy, dangerous to the liberties of the country," remained steadfast in that opinion after his election to the chief magistracy, and insisted that the tax on tea and coffee should not be given up until the payment of the debt was fully assured.

During the darkest days of our civil war, the debt-paying traditions of the republic were never lost sight of. A sinking fund was provided for all debts created, and Secretary Chase of the Treasury kept all the new and great obligations incurred within the reach of an early option of redemption, following in that the policy of Albert Gallatin, when he was at the head of the Treasury during the war of 1812 and 1815.

The debates in Congress, after the civil war was over, upon the funding act of July 14th, 1870, show that, even if there was then in some quarters a secret wish or hope that the debt might be perpetual, nobody ventured to avow any other policy than that of its steady reduction and final payment. It surely will not be an easy thing to persuade the country to reverse precedents which have been unbroken for nearly a century, and to begin now, for the first time, in the midst of peace. and abounding wealth, to enter upon the policy of debtperpetuation.

2. The payment of the debt is the most effective method of preparing for war in time of peace. It is also the most direct means of avoiding war, since nothing can more plainly tend to dissuade foreign nations from making aggressions upon us than to see that our finances are unencumbered and available for defense. If we were to-day involved in hostilities with a foreign country, we should be obliged, first of all, for the essential purpose of protecting our credit, to provide $48,750,000 annually, which is the official estimate of the interest on the debt during the current fiscal year. If free from debt, we should, with the same revenue, have $48,750,000 more in hand to expend every year in military and naval operations. Furthermore, as the enormous money-cost of modern wars always creates a necessity for loans, we could borrow more abundantly, and at easier rates, than if our credit was partly exhausted by obligations already outstanding. It was, "as a very important source of strength and security," that General Washington, in his farewell address, advised the country to "cherish public credit,” and, as the best means to that end, to make "vigorous exertions in times of peace to discharge the debt which unavoidable wars have occasioned." He knew practically, as well as theoretically, that "money is the sinews of war," and with that sound sense which never failed him, he saw that nothing would more surely put us in a position to command the sinews of war than to be free from the drain of interest and impairment to credit resulting from pre-existing debts.