The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1862-06-05

new direct taxation, will have an immense eff
feet upon the minds and feelings of the people,
politically, socially and morally. In the first
place it will cause mere political questions and
issues Of mere local and sectional Importance
to be all merged in financial questions and dis
cussions, and in the consideration Of what is
not appropriately called the almighty dollar.
Hitherto the people, free from the burthens
which the nations of Europe have had to sustain
have, for want of better employment, wasted
their energies upon issues of a purely moral
or sectional character. Hence it has been that,
in default of more general and more national
questions, they have at one time been split into
parties upon such question as Masonic or
other societies; at another time they have been
divided into violent parties on the question Of
United States Bank; and last of all they
have, a final hobby, amused themselves
by taking up moral question as an incen-
tive to political animosities, and have some
Of them gone mad on the abstract question
of the morality or immortality of slavery
in some Of the States Henceforward .
new question will arise-that Of the dollar
which seems destined to swallow up all the
others. The original holders of government
securities will become wealthy, both by the great
rise of those values in the market and the
immunity they will enjoy from taxation. The
holders of them will make seven, eight or ten
per cent on their capital, without risk and with
out labor, while other classes, who have en-
barked their capital in trade or manufactures,
subject to no little risk, and requiring exertion
and labor, will hardly make more, if, indeed,
so much. Here will be subject for jealousies
and emulations. But these passions are the
seed and origin of political and social feuds
and parties The question, then, will next
arise, if this is quite fair and, after some years
of ferment and discussion, will, perhaps, bring
up the question before the national councils,
whether the examples of France and England
ought not to be followed, and some reduction
be made in the amount of interest on the debt
1t will take, however, many years before the
people will come to this conclusion. The value
of real estate and rents, &C., will necessarily
fall to some extent under the new system Of
taxation, and the people who have to pay per-
haps ten per cent of their income in taxes will
see the necessity Of curtailing their expendi-
lures and of moderating that luxurious and os-
tentatious display and outlay which have made
Fifth avenue so gorgeous and the pompeus
scions of parvenu aristocracy so ridiculous. A
new and more sober minded class of citizens
will spring up among -fundholders- people
who live at ease in moderate, quiet manner,
upon small incomes derived from investments
in the public funds or national securities. These
will form large and influential class Of mode
rately independent men, whose expenditures
will form, as they do in France and England, a
considerable item in the promotion of the in
dustrial arts and productive employments, and
whose freedom from the cares of trade and the
tolls of labor will create such a social class
among us as hitherto has been lacking to our
civilization. In word, society will be reno
delled, as it were, under the new aspect of af
fairs produced by the silent revolution of q
large debt to meet by taxation.
Seriously considered, the liabilities which we
shall have to undertake and the burthens to
bear in order to maintain our national credit,
although apparently SO enormous as to equal in
amount half the national debt of England,
which it has taken centuries to create, will be
light burden to us compared to what the
English debt is to England. Our country is
greater in extent, in resources, and even in
population, than England-at all events, our
taxpaying population exceeds theirs in the
ratio of at least ten to one. The masses, the
millions, in England are miserably poor COM
pared to our fourishing and we'll paid popula-
ton. It would be no exaggeration, therefore,
to say that we could raise among us even the
whole amount of English taxation more easily
than the English can do; much more then we
rich; but the masses are well off; whereas in
that country few are immensely rich and the
masses are very poor. Not only there they
have much more to pay in taxation
than we shall have to do, but they are at least a
hundred times less able to pay it than we are.
1t is worthy of consideration to reflect upon
the difference existing between the two people
as to the object and purposes for which these
several amounts of taxation are required. The
English debt is the result of wars carried on
for more than two centuries and q half-wars
in which the people had no interest and took
no rational part Theirs is debt for the wars
of the dead, and for wars, too, begun and car
ried on by kings and cabinets for frivolous
causes, and terminating without any beneficial
results. The same difference holds good with
respect to the debt of France and all the other
European nations. But our war has been q
war for life, war for our existence IS q
free and republican people, war waged by
the people themselves for the very life and ex-
istence of popular institutions 1t is the
peoples war against gang of false, traitorous,
selfish and base politicians-men sold to Eng
land and France, and in haste to adopt their
kingly and oligarchic form of government, in
hurry even to receive . king from one or
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