New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1863-01-26
NATIONAL STRAITS.

Liberty has its money price. Vigilance, even
though it be eternal, must be paid for. The
proposition may be sneered at as degrading,
because the poetry aud rhetoric Of our horn
books have laugh, us that liberty was the re-
ward Of patriotism. But poets, while careful!
of the harmony OF their couplets, have been
proyerbiaIly careless Of the jingle Of their dol
lars. Our Revolution had its money price in
the onerous taxation it imposed on some, in
the destruction of property to others wherever
an army Of either friend or foe could penetrate,
while even these losses were duplicated on the
same sufferers by the yet more ruinous col
lapse of vast paper currency. Whatever
portion of the whole national debt was subse-
quently funded, represented nero fraction OF
the great money price the nation paid for
its independence. Whatever blessings were TO
be secured to us by that independence. we're
at that time so imperfectly understood, that
half the population was composed of Tories,
who blindly aud Indignantly opposed its acqui-
sition. Their hostility delayed it for years
Yet no money price was considered too gre at
by the statesmen who conducted the struggle,
no pers too hazardous by the iron-hearted
men who led their armies TO victory But We
of later generations have enjoyed for eighty
years the liberty thus achieved, and can thus
appreciate its value. Its continuance is in
fntey more important to us than was its
acquisition to our fathers. With them the
value was indefinite, by US it has been weighed
and ascertained. Az there was money price
connected with its acquisition, so there Ia
another as the condition Of its preservation
We must be infinitely baser than our fathers
should We be unwilling to pay it. Arc We
rich enough to do sol
The war which England waged against
Napoleon when stripped Of all political
CLOSES, was in reality war for her COM
mercia independence. Napoleon stigmatzed
England as a nation of shopkeopers, and he
stroye by every form of arbitrary decree to
ruin her financially. Her commerce AID man
ulactures were to be destroyed-all the world
was forbidden to trade with her under peril
Of capture aud confscation. Considering her
q purely commercial nation, he aimed to crush
her by the ruin Of her principal interest.
That ruined, her people were to compel the
Ministry to make humiliating peace. His
tactics were identical with those of our own
domestic traitors. At the beginning of the
war in the Peninsula, British exports amounted
~ G57,0OO,OO0, but Napoleon's system of COM
mercia terror reduced them in three years to
f23, 900, 900. England was overwhelmed
with every form of suIering-clamor
OF the people against the war, starvation Of
thousands, and the terror of impending INVASION
War taxes amounting to $500, 900, 900 per
annum were laid and tax of 10 per cent on
incomes. Paupersm, violence and pillage be-
came frightfully prevalent. The war debt in
creased at a fearful rate. Government stock
gradually sank to 80, and finally to 80, and
even this in tho deprecated paper Of tho time.
The Bank OF England had suspended, and coin
was seized upon as at present, az an object of
speculation. Parliament prohibited the buying
and selling Of it by ruinous penalties. Such as
the Government needed for tho army chest was
purchased at a premium of 80 per cent. The
army could DO paid ia gold only. Ours is glad
enough to be paid in paper; and the coin needed
by the Treasury, even for the payment of long
standing loans, is obtained without premium at
4 per cent per annum.
At tho period referred 10, England had q