The Sun.
London, England, 1864-09-01 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

POST.—So soon as it was discovered that the
Federal Government were unable to crush in its

commencement the rebellion which threatened the

existence of the American Union, persons of a spe-
culative turn of mind proceeded to estimate the
probable duration of the civil war, on the basis of the
material resources of the two belligerents. The re-
spective numbers of the populations of the Northern

and Southern States were duly noted,-and the
sources from which the expenditure of the war was
to be met were made the subjects of careful investi-

gation. Modern warfare very closely resembles
litigation, and victory in the one case, as in the
other, generally ranges on the side of those who
possess the longest purse. But those who believed
that pecuniary considerations would influence either
of the rival Confederations, soon discovered their

mistake. Neither the North nor the South pos-
sessed considerable revenues, but this circumstance
did not in the slightest degree tend to curb
an expenditure which, literally and not meta-
phorically, soon became boundless. For the North
debt had no terrors, so confident were they that
their enterprise would ultimately be successful,
and that their obligations would be satisfied out of
the pockets of the vanquished; whilst, on the
other hand, the South considered, and with justice,
that no sum could be too high to pay as the price of
their independence. And so the war proceeded,
and the debts of the belligerents increased, As,
however, notwithstanding 'he recklessness with
which the Old Republic has pledged its credit, and
the necessity imposed on the infant State of follow-
ing its example, a day of reckoning must sooner or
later come, it may not be unadvisable to consider
the financial conditions of the Governments of the
two Confederations, It is some little time since re-
ports have been published either by the Secretary
of the Treasury at Washington or at Richmond;
but this circumstance will not preclude us from
forming a tolerably correct estimate of the present
position both of Northern and Southern finance.
On this occasion we will confine our attention to the
national ledger of the Northern States. We pub-
lished in our columns a day or two since a report,
prepared in the beginning of the present year by
Mt. Stuart, her Majesty's Secretary of Legation at
Washington, which set forth in very clear language
the receipts and expenditure of the Federal Govern-
ment for the past four years. To this report we
will now take the opportunity of referring, making
such comments as the truly extraordinary nature
of its contents may set forth. Before the seces-
sion of the Southern States the public debt of the
United States was a little in excess of £13,000,000,
and the annual revenues of the Government at
the same time were between £16,000,000 and
£17,000,000, the expenditure being such as io leave
a surplus of about £500,000. The financial year
terminates in Washington on the Ist of July, and
on that day, in the year 1862, some fifteen months
after the accession of Mr. Lincoln, the debt had
been raised to £105,587,509. In 1863 it had in-
creased to £225,624,883, and on the Ist of July in the
present year it was estimated that it would reach
£346,397,667, and that in 1856 it would fall
little short of £500,000,000. Whilst, however,
the general state of the debt was thus increasing
the annual revenues and expenditure increased in
proportions equally amazing. The receipts, which
for the year ending in July, 1861, were a little
under £18,000,000, rose to close on £120,000,000
in the following year; in 1863, to £185,000,000 ;
and in 1864 were estimated to reach £155,000,000.
The expenditure during the same years being—in
1861, £17,367,000; in 1862, £117,215,000; in
1863, £183,941,000; and in 1864, £154,000,000.
For the year ending in July, 1865, the estimated
expenditure is £154,376,000, and, as the receipts for
the same year are only set down at £42,000,000, the
balance would of course have to be raised by way of
loan. Glancing, however, from these totals to the
items of which they are composed, the first circum-
stance that strikes the inquirer is that the bulk of
the receipts is composed of loans—the legitimate
revenues of the country showing a comparatively
trifling increase since the commencement of the war.
Thus in 1862 the receipts from taxation are only
£2,000,000 in excess of those of the previous year,
being about £11,000,000 from all sources, whereas
the sums raised by loans had mounted from
£8,000,000 to £108,000,000. In 1863 the receipts
from taxation amounted to £25,000,000, and those
from loans to £160,000,000. In 1864 taxation was
expected to have brought into the Exchequer
£33,000,000, but did not produce three-fourths of
that sum, whilst the loans increased the existing
debt by upwards of £140,000,000. An analysis of
the items of expenditure shows, as might be ex-
pected, that the immense drain has been occasioned
almost exclusively by the war. The Army and Navy
Departments, which together cost about £7,000,000
in 1861, cost in 1862 nearly 4,90,000,000, in 1863
£136,000,000, and in 1864 upwards of £200,000,000.
The average annual expenditure at the present rate
may, therefore, be set down at about £150,000,000,
and of this sum about £134,000,000 may be con-
sidered the annual expense of the war. The
simple fact that even if the war comes to an
end in the middle of next year the national debt
of the Federal Government will be close on
£500,000,000, bearing interest amounting to about
£20,000,000, is one which stands without parallel
in the financial history of the world. In four short
years a debt has been created which, if not so great
as that which England took a century to accumu-
late, will necessitate the payment of as large, if
not a larger, sum annually to the creditors of the
State. Virtually no attempt has been made (as the
figures we have quoted show) to pay by taxation
even a small portion of the enormous expenditure
which the war has occasioned ; and it remains to be
seen whether, at the conclusion of the war, the
people of the Northern States will put their
shoulder to the wheel and contribute a larger sum
than in 1861 covered the entire expenditure of the
undivided Republic, merely to pay off the interest
on the debt which they have so recklessly contracted,
Nor is it alone the immense debt, and its accruing
interest, that the inquirer into the financial pros-
pects of the Northern Republic should alone take
into consideration to know what the peace establish-
ment of the United States cost before the secession
of the South; but who can say what expenditure
it will entail on the termination of the war ? What
is to be done with the gigantic armies at present
scattered over the American continent ? Will the
individuals composing them lay down their arms
and once more turn to the cultivation of the peace-
ful arts ? We doubt it very much. Can either of
the Confederacies henceforth dispense with a stand.
ing army ? To this question we would wish that
an affirmative reply could be given ; but a little
consideration only leads one to fear that the answer
of both republics will be in the negative. What,
then, will be the probable amount of the revenues
which the Government at Washington will be called
upon to raise by taxation at the conclusion of the
war in order to keep the vessel of the Stat afloat and
maintain the national credit ? They must certainly
reach £40,000,000, but will more probably touch
£60,000,000. What means the population of the
North have of raising these revenues we will ex-
amine on a subsequent occasion. For the present
we merely place before the public as precisely as
possible the financial position in which the Federal
Government will find themselves placed, assuming
that the first act of Mr. Lincoln's successor is to
suspend hostilities and re-establish peace between
the rival Republics.
HERALD.—it is not often that our French con•
temporaries venture to describe the sentiments really
entertained towards them by their neighbours upon
the other side of the Pyrenees. Recently there has
been an honourable exception to this rule in the
person of M. Auguste Villemot a;correenondent of
the Temps. This plain-speaking gentleman was
present, as were also other French journalists, at
the inauguration of the North of Spain Railway by
the King of Spain. Upon taking a tour in the
Peninsula he quickly discovered the genuine feeling
of the Spanish people, or at any rate of that portion
of them with which ho became acquainted, towards
their unwelcome visitors. The unfortunate writer
had to complain not merely of cold and scanty hos-
pitality, but during his route from San Sebastian to
Vittoria had to submit also to the significant cry of
the villages, of " be off with you," in their language.
M. Villemot from this reception, so unsatisfactory
to his national and personal pride, has had the good
sense to draw some pertinent conclusions, coloured,
perhaps, a little by his Parisian habits of thought.
The Spaniard is not the uncivilised or inhospitable
being that our amusing contemporary would repre-
sent ; upon the contrary, he is distinguished by a
hearty, though it may be stately, hospitality. Apart 1
i from this
_colouring, M. Villemot's inference is in
the Imain undeniable. The Spanish people do not
love Frenchmen. Nor is this surprisinea when we
consider the characteristic differences between the
two nations, as well as the history of their relations
to one another. It is the boast of a Frenchman that
he belongs to the gayest, lightest-hearted, and most
cosmopolitan race in the world. This character is
exactly that which disqualifies him from mixing
kindly with the staid and sober Spaniard, who is of
all others the least inclined to put up;with anything
foreign. Just as in other countries, in England as
mach as in France, the romance of their history
leads them hack to the period in which conflicting
elements, whether native or foreign, were made
to cohere in one people, so Spanish romance points
to the epoch in which the foreigner was expelled as
the most glorious one .n the annals of Spain. If
there is a person thoroughly detested by a genuine
Spaniard, it is the so-called citizen of the world.
Patriotism ho understands, of that ho has given
proofs *harked with his best blood, but pan-Teuton-
ism, pan-Slaeism, paneliellenisne, pan-Gallicism,
are not to his taste. Thera was a period when he

would have liked to have held Flanderi and Pore
tugal, but he never pretended that he did this be.
cause he had a special regard fur the Flemish or
the Portuguese people; his right, he would have
told you, lay in the power of the sword and pre-
scription ; in his days or supremacy be was not an
assimilator, but a conqueror. A Frenchman, con.
sequently, may expect far more sympathy from the
quick-witted Italian than from the graver inhabi-
tant of the Peninsula. But it must not be thought
that this is owing to inferiority of intelligence upon
the part of the Spaniard ; on the contrary, if humour
is to be placed above wit—•and the first place will
always be assigned to it by delicacy of taste—there
is nothing more truly humourous than the best
productions of Spanish literature. Not only are the
characters of the French and Spanish nations essen.
tially different—one representing Attic smartness,
the other Spartan gravity—but the events of hiss
tory have also established between them a distinc.
tion that seems to be ineffaceable, an a•ienation
which threatens to be permanent. M. Villemot has
the candour to acknowledge that the undying hatred
of the Spanish people is inspired by recollections
of the first French Empire. This is unquestionably
true, but we may go a little deeper. We may look
upon the circumstance that the crowns of France
and Spain are at present worn by Sovereigns of
rival dynasties as purely fortuitous. Certainly
this accident of itself would not tend to promote
good feeling between the respective Governments,
' but for the purposes of administration, and from
motives of policy, this sort of difficulties is not
formidable. That which arises from the in-
herent and mutual dislike of the two nations is
more serious. Both of them are branches of the
Latin family, and for a long time the contest
between them for pre-eminence was scarcely de.
tided. An epoch arrived in which victory wes un-
mistakably upon the side of Spain, but her triumph
was short-lived, as sovereignty soon passed over to
her detested rival. We have here at once an element
of Peninsular hatred, quickened naturally by the
gross excesses of the first Napoleon's marshals and
the armies under their command. It was not merely'
that the victors of Pavia and St. Quentin had lo;t
the supremacy of the Latin name, although that
reflection must to Castilian pride have been almost
insupportable, but that those to whom they had
once given law now trampled them into the dust.
Instead of peace being dictated under the walls of
Paris, Madrid had become a French city. It is a
well-ettested fact in history that the nearer in blood
two nations are the more bitter is their conflict. We
have not to go back to ancient history to find ex-
amples of this : the relations that existed between
Athens and the lonians existed also between the
rival chieftains of Ireland and the Scotch Highlands,
exist now between the contending sections of
America. Thus, the very fact that both the French.
man and the Spaniard claimed a Latin parentage
was a sure omen that their struggle would be the
more deadly; it in some degree accounts for the
cruelties perpetrated by the French soldiery. For
it must be remembered that the great Revolution,
when it inverted the face of French society, brought
the Latin element of the nation upwards, whilst the
Norman. Frank was comparatively depressed. As.
suredly much of the outrage committed by the
French armies in Spain is to be ascribed to their
unbounded habits of licence; but even this reason
does not satisfactorily explain why English and
Spanish prisoners were treated with so marked a

distinction by a French captor. Having already
this cause of hatred existing, we may guess if the
Spanish people would be pleased by the part which
France took in the revivification of Italy, a third
member of the Latin family. Religion, indeed,
would make a Spaniard regard with horror the
spoliation of the Papal dominions ; but independ-
ently of this, political feeling would have its weight
with him. It is not enough, he would think, that
I am no longer the leader of the Latin name, but
there is also to be raised up a third Power, whom I
used to treat as a makeweight in the family, and
that Power likely to be a naval one, menacing both
my imperial and commercial interests. It is as reaa
sonable to expect that Spain can ever entertain core
dial sympathy for either France or Italy, as they
are at present constituted, as it would be to imagine
that an old Argive would under any circumstances
have consented without the most envenomed jeal-
ousy and hostility to the transfer of the Dorian
sceptre from Argos to Lacedmmon. We have not
dwelt upon this subject because we rejoice in the
division of the various members composing the great
Latin family, but because it expresses a historical
truth which the modern nationalist would do well
to study. There can be no question that M. Ville-
mot is justlfied in admitting without dispute the
dislike home by the Spanish people towardt. France.
We have followed him the more readily in discuss%
ing the question because this dislike does not BOOM
to us to be founded upon special grounds only, but,
like most other problems of history, to be capable of
generalisation.