The prospect of an American National debt is alarming to even those who have been the principal cause of inflicting it upon the people. Hear what the New York Tribune, which had no small influence in bringing into practical development and manifestation the “Irrepressible conflict,” says on the subject.
The commencement of the period of Public Debt in England found the people in a comparatively happy condition; a numerous class of landed proprietors; an independent yeomanry; an industrious and well paid manufacturing population diffused through several districts. The agricultural laborers lived, for the most part, in their own cottages, on the borders of the common lands belonging to every township. Every man able and willing to work had good, substantial fare, and strong, home-made clothing. The poor-rates were small in amount, though distributed with liberality. Bankruptcies seldom occurred, for the gains of labor and of trade were sure and constant. As the debt increased in magnitude the small landed proprietors disappeared, as well as the cottages and gardens on the borders of the common lands; the very name of “yeoman” was lost; the laboring population, agricultural and manufacturing, was crushed into pauperism and crime, and the traders were continually driven into bankruptcy. Out of this widespread ruin and desolation grew up a class of speculators in funds, loan-mongers, contractors and commissioners, who drew into great heaps of wealth of which the people were despoiled by the customs, officers and tax-gatherers. The number of bankrupts increased fivefold, while population doubled; the cost of living – the barest subsistence – increased twofold, but wages were enhanced only one-half; and while wages thus lagged behind prices, taxes increased in fearful ratio. A constant and corresponding increase in the poor-rates testified to the ruinous nature to the revolution going on, and afforded an exact measure of the descending career of the people, indicating faithfully the successive levels of degradation to which they were forced.
Here, in a few periods, are the outlines of the history of a people loaded with a great Public Debt. Let those who speak flippantly of fastening this national malady upon the people of this country explore the heartrending detains of this epitomized account of a nations woes.
The phenomena here exhibited are the inevitable concomitants of a great Public Debt. The tax placed upon the commodities which enter into general consumption is sure to come mainly from the people of small or moderate means, and is so much dead weight placed upon Labor, only increasing the gains of those who have money to lend. The system, in its perfection, is the denial to the working people of adequate wages and proper food, and yet requiring them to supply the revenues of the State.
The most fallacious of all the arguments put forward in its favor is that it strengthens the government by directly interesting the people in its continuance. A strong moneyed interest is undoubtedly thereby committed to its maintenance; but in times of peril and disaster it is in the masses of the people that a government finds its main support or encounters its most dangerous enemy. The great funded debt of England is held by but an inconsiderable portion of her population. One third of the whole amount is held by about 150 loan-mongers, many of them foreigners; fully one half is held by about 2,000 persons; while considerably less than 300,000 hold the entire debt. So far from being an element of strength, the Public Debt of England is her one vulnerable point. Before the exigencies of public credit, England, haughty and defiant as she now seems, has more than once quailed, and borne patiently, as every student of her history knows, invasions of her traditional policy, which, under other circumstances, she would have resented with war.
Let the events of the last six months rebuke those who speak with complacency of the fastening upon our people of that great national calamity – a public debt. There is no support for a Government so sure as that which is found in millions of intelligent, prosperous, and happy freemen, each one of whom is found to it by consciousness of rights held sacred, and unequalled opportunities for progress.
– Published in The Dubuque Herald, Dubuque, Iowa, Friday Morning, February 7, 1862, p. 2
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