Wheeling daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, Va. [W. Va.]) 1852-1859, 1858-07-14


TO AMEmcANs.-The New York Post quotes an
article from tho London Ec0nomiSt, ndprefaces
the quotations With some very fcrcible remarks
of its own, intended to show that national
debt is not, as some people seem to think,
national blessing--but that, on the con-
trary, it is the very opposite. From this article
we learn that the debt of England has not been
accommodating through the long gone lapse of
ages which one would naturally suppose from
its immense proportions. We learn, also, that
it amounts to the sum offorty hundred millions
of dollars, and that it takes about one hundred
and forty millions per annum to pay the inter-
es: on this This hundred and forty millions is
greater sam than all the balance of the gov
eminent expenses, civil and military, put to.
pether. This, of course, is making the English
people of this age pay not only their own ex-
penses, but the expenses of their predecessors.
The debt Of England, one cannot help feeling as
thev read about it, is fearful affair. To do it
away, were such thing possible, would be like
doing away the force of grovitation from the
earth upon which Englishmen tread. For it is
doubtful whether then, as now, the English
mind would gravitate so largely towards the
throne. The purpose of the article TO which
We started out to refer and quote from, is to
warn our people against the fearful increase in
our national expenditures, and to show how it
is possible, in little while, to accumulate bur-
then which our children's children may not be
able to shake off. On this head the Post says:
The impression prevails we suspect, to a con-
siderable extent in this country, and, perhaps,
elsewhere that this debt is the slow accrcton of
an indefinite period of time md that it has
/ been the handmade of England's prosperity;
that it has grown with her growth and strength
ened with her strength; and, when the posslbili-
ty of similar burdens being bound on our backs,
| has been suggested, we have comforted our
selves with the reflection that like the calf
which Milo carried q mile every day until II be-
came an OK, the increase in weight would be SO
steadily developed, that we should bear the
| beast full grown easily as we bore it during
the week of its birth. This is great and per-
nicious deusion. No social evil, affecting all
classes, is developed more rapidly, we believed,
/ than a national debt The monStrouS debt of
England is of comparatively recent origin
/ None of it is twice as old as or constitution.
| With the exception of trifing debt TO bankers,
the first loans were made in 1880, and to the
amount of only SO 100, 900. AT the end of one
hundred years from that time, that is in 1902,
their debt had reached the sum of S1,905, 000,-
| 900, on which the annual charge to the govern
,nent was 81, 375,OOO.
| Within the next twenty three years this debt
was increased by no less sum than So, $685.
OOO,OU0, making total in 1915 of $4,27n,O 0O,-
| 600, and involving an annual charge of $780,
! 2SOOOO. Thus in the short space of less than
a century and quarter had this enormous and
paralyzing debt grown up from nothing.
We may sec from these facts that it is one of
the easiest things in the world to run nation
into debt To get it out, is one of the most
difficult as the experience of England proves;
and of course, the difficulty increases with the
amount, in compound ratio. All that she has
succeeded in reducing her Indebtedness with
the variouSly contriyed sinking funds which
different generations of her statesmen have
tried, amounts to but $3.50, 0OO,OO0, or less than
her EXPENSES for single year.
If England, when comparatively free from
debt could run behind almost three thousand
millions of dollars in tile short space OF twenty
three years, at time when gold was worth
much more than it is now, and her resources
nothing like what they are at present, what
reason have we to suppose Americans, who
voted for Buchanan in 1856, may not live to
pay interest on national debt larger in amount
than the entire commercial capital of the
country quarter of century ago? If in
a time Of profound peace with all, except our
own citizens, we find ourselves running behind
about Sl00,000,0 0U year, it is not too much to
say that war with any irSt,claSs power,-and
with foreign policy as reckless as ours, no
one can tell how soon such a catastrophe may
overtake us-would bring that tax upon us
much sooner even, perhaps, than the period we
have named.
But it is not the burden which such indebted
ness binds upon tina backs of the people, merely,
that makes national curse. 1t weakens a ma
ton where it most needs strengthen its inter
course with foreign nations; and provokes en-
croachment from abroad in the sane degree that
it weakens :he capacity by increasing the cost
of resisting it. The more considerate people of
England feel this. They see that her foreign
relations are affected unfavorably by her vast
liabilities, and while there is no disposition to
reproach the present government for " hat it is
| in no way responsible, and for which no two
can agree upon a remedy, they cannot disguise
the fact that it is an clement of weakness against
which it seems as if no human wisdom or fore
sight can PROVIDE.
HuenEs OF INDIANA TELLS HIS CossruENrs
Amour TIE 'DpEI" WITH HAMS, OF ILLINOIS.