comparison with those of England in the wars of the French Revolution.  England is now threatening to take part against us in this war, waged by the first State (according to Mr. Vice-president Stephens) ever avowedly founded on Slavery as its corner-stone, on the ground that our blockade of the Southern ports is not effectual,—­forgetting, apparently, that our last war with her was in part to resist her pretended right to seal up with a paper blockade every port in the French Empire.

The great practical question which presses most heavily upon the mind, not only of every person responsible for the conduct of affairs, but of every intelligent and thoughtful citizen, is, in what way the vast expenditure is to be met, which is necessary to bring this gigantic struggle to a prompt and successful issue.  It has been customary, from the first, to estimate this expenditure at a million and a half of dollars per diem, and it will not be lessened while the war lasts.  How is this frightful expenditure to be met?

The answer is simple, and is contained in the one little word “Taxation.”  Without this, all else will be of no avail.  Our civil rulers may have the wisdom of Solomon; our generals and admirals may equal in skill and courage the greatest captains of ancient or modern times; we may place in the field the bravest and best-disciplined armies that ever battled in a righteous cause,—­but without an amount of taxation adequate to sustain the credit of the Government, all this show of counsel and strength will pass away, and that at no distant period, like a morning cloud and the early dew.

“Adequate to sustain the credit of the Government,”—­for that is all that is required.  It is by no means necessary, as it is by no means just, that the whole of this vast expenditure should fall upon the shoulders of the present generation.  Engaged in a contest of which the result, for good or for evil, is, if possible, more important to posterity than to ourselves,—­a struggle in which the great cause of civil liberty, as embodied and regulated by the Constitution and laws, is more deeply involved, not only for this, but for all future generations, than in any other war ever waged,—­it is not right that the burden should fall exclusively on ourselves.  Nor is it necessary.  There is, perhaps, no feature in our modern civilization in which its beauty, flexibility, and strength, as compared with that of antiquity, is more signally displayed, than the well-organized credit-system of a prosperous State:  the system which makes men not only willing, but desirous, to forego the actual possession of that darling property which has been the great object of desire through life,—­which they have sought by all honest and, unhappily too often, dishonest means, to gain and accumulate,—­provided only they can receive a fair equivalent for its use.  By the wise application of this almost mysterious principle, the members of modern civilized States are not only, for the time being, much more effectually consociated in the joint life and action of the country than would have been possible without it, but even distant generations—­men separated from each other by years, not to say ages—­are brought into a noble partnership of effort in great and generous undertakings and sacrifices.