Dr. Johnson somewhat cynically says, that

  “Mortgaged States, in everlasting debt,
  From age to age their grandsires’ wreaths regret.”

This may be true of debts incurred in wars of ambition and conquest; but what citizen of the United States, at the present day, would not, with a willing mind, if it were still necessary, bear his part of the pecuniary burdens of the American Revolution?

It is a well-established law of public credit, that it can be carried to any length to which it is sustained by an efficient system of taxation.  So long as provision is made to secure in this way the regular payment of the interest on the sums borrowed, the Government holds the purse-strings of the capitalist, and has nothing to do but to call for whatever amount is needed for the public service.  This, however, is the essential condition, and nothing else will, for any length of time, produce the desired result.  In the first fervor of a great popular movement, and in confident reliance that effective provision to sustain it will eventually be made, a large loan may be obtained from the banks, from capitalists, or the mass of the people; but this will be a temporary, probably a solitary, effort.  No Government can permanently sustain its credit, but by providing the means (independent of credit) to pay the interest on its public debt.  To borrow more money in order to pay the interest on that already borrowed is bankruptcy in disguise.

With these general principles established and clearly borne in mind, we perceive the absurdity of the language which has been so freely used abroad and is even sometimes heard at home, since the suspension of specie-payments, that the United States are on the verge of bankruptcy.  Let the expenses of the war in which we are now engaged against the “disappointed aspirants” of the South be estimated as high as six hundred millions of dollars.  A loan to this amount implies, at the usual rate, the payment of an interest of thirty-six millions, certainly a large amount in addition to the ordinary expenditure of the Government, but not more than a fifth part of the annual interest on the public debt of England,—­by no means a formidable percentage, allowing for a short war, on the annual surplus income of the country.

In fact, when we cast our eyes over the continent and contemplate the vast extent of fertile land already brought or capable of being readily brought into cultivation,—­the productive agricultural, manufacturing, and commercial investments,—­our internal and foreign trade,—­our fisheries, and our mining operations,—­the rapid increase of labor (the great creative source of wealth) by the growth of our own native population and the steady flow of immigration from abroad,—­when we contemplate these things, the draughts which must be made upon the resources of the country in the successful prosecution of the war, great as they are, are really insignificant Let us take a single item, but one which