"There is not now any other basis for this currency, nor can any other be devised, than the debt of the whole United States. The issue of national bank notes at present is restricted to $300,000,000, and the States in rebellion are not reconstructed, and the national banking system has hardly crossed the Mississippi River. No man will say that that volume of currency is enough for the coming wants of the nation, who con siders the demand for money to spring up in the resurrected and reinvigorated South, and soon in the West and the far Northwest ; who considers the prodigious immigration that began to pour into the country before the rebellion grounded arms, and which will for years flood to us from Germany, England, France, Ireland, Norway, and Sweden; who considers the vast attraction of manufactures and arts from Europe to America by a tariff system that promises lasting rewards to labor in the midst of politics, that crown labor with freedom and social equality; who considers the marvellous develop ment of industry—mining, manufacturing, and agricultural—of which our country is destined soon to be the theatre, and every hour of every day of which will demand cur rency as the machine of its exchanges.
"This is not a hazardous opinion which declares that in less than twenty years our national bank note circulation will be one thousand millions of dollars. Bear in mind that there are now in the United States thirty-five millions of people, and that for the last half-century the population of our country has doubled in numbers in every twenty three and a half years. The currency that sixty-one millions of people, unequalled in industry and untrammelled in enterprise, will require, has got to have the basis of a national credit. There is no other foundation for it to stand on that will impart to it at once security and nationality.
" Secondly. There is no reason to apprehend that the interest of the national debt will be burdensome to the people and oppressive to the development of the resources of the country; because, after legislation has readjusted the internal taxes and excise, and re remodelled the tariff so as throw the weight of the debt on luxuries and accumulated wealth, where it ought to be thrown, and made to rest lightly on the necessaries of life and on daily labor, it can almost wholly lighten the burden by diffusing it, year after year, over a larger population, through greater production, increased wealth, and increasing incomes. Time will effect this, unaided; but legislation and associate action can rapidly hurry this diminution of the debt and of the weight of the interest. Organize immigration, remove to the United States the cotton manufacture of England, bring here a large part of the silk and muslin manufacture of France, the iron make and the cutlery manu facture of Britain, lift up and bring here a large portion of the mining population of Europe, set it down in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and that further imperial mineral domain which extends through seventeen degrees of longitude and sixteen degrees of latitude, and contains an area of more than a million square miles, literally crammed with gold, silver, copper, iron, coal, lead, tin, salt, quicksilver, gypsum, asphaltum, and marble, and which asks only an amount of labor relatively equal to that expended on California, to yield four hundred millions pet annum out of two minerals alone,—gold and silver. In
aid of this organized immigration, readjust the import duties, so as to make it more profitable for the Lyons weavers and the Spitalfields and Manchester spinners to take up their looms and weave in America, than to manufacture where they are and squeeze through our custom-houses. Diffuse the burden of the interest of our debt, abroad as well as at home, by imposing export duties upon products that Europe has got to buy of us in spite of herself,—on our cotton, tobacco, petroleum, and breadstuffs. There will be international justice as well as political economy in summoning the nations which armed, clothed, and fed the rebellion, lent it money, and built, manned, supplied, and refitted the corsairs which swept the commerce of the United States for four years from all seas, to help to pay the debt which they helped to create. This summons, through the imposition of export duties, they will have to obey. They can't help them selves. They must have our four great staples, and pay our price for them. We say `export duties,' knowing that the Constitution of the United States forbids them. We use the words only to convey an idea, and because of their popular significance. Excise duties of sufficient amount should be levied on these staples where produced. They would carry with them these taxes if they went abroad.
"If they were consumed at home, the laws would see to it that, by suitable drawbacks or lighter taxation on the manufactured article, the domestic interests of the country were sufficiently protected. The rebels, in copying our Constitution, omitted the clause forbidding export duties, intending to make England and France pay the cost of their war, and the expense of establishing and maintaining their Confederacy, out of taxes upon the cotton and tobacco they would have to buy." In regard to the payment of the national debt, it is pretty certain that the Govern ment could not pay it now, or one-tenth of it, even if they had the money to do it ; and it may require something more than an offer when the bonds mature. Nothing less than the suspension of interest will induce the people to give up their bonds. They are better than gold to the laboring-man or the banker, because they constantly ac cumulate. But, nevertheless, we do not advocate any scheme, however attractive, which tends to repudiation or the non-payment of the principal of our national loan. We think it highly important that we should know ourselves able and willing to pay our bonds as they fall due, and that the world should see and feel our power not only to make war successfully, but to pay the costs of war. If we provide for the payment of both interest and principal of our present debt, we shall be able to raise double the amount in another emergency. But the simple fact of our will and ability to pay our debts will prevent their accumulation in future.