Daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, Va. [W. Va.]) 1859-1865, 1864-06-25
r.n-, thn No Ynri, pn.t.

From the New York Post.
Can we Pay our National nebt3
The population of the United Kingdom
is about the same as that of the United
States. The national debt of Great Britain
is about four thousand millions, aud ours
about one thousand seven hundred mil
lions. Can We support Que debt without
ruipous taxation? Can we bear, that is
to say, much less than half of what En-
glishmen bear without suffering2
supposing that the circumstances of the
two nations were alike; no American OF
spirit would doubt that we can support as
heavy burden as our English cousins
let alone far Fighter. But our circum-
thickly settled, soil exhausted to great
extent of its fertility, system of land te-
nure extremely wasteful, an organization
of society which represses instead of en-
courages individual energy and enterprise.
We have q virgin soil, inexhaustible min
eral wealth, system of land tenure, at
least in the free states, which conduces to
| the highest prosperity of the greatest num-
Der, and a condition of society in which
Individual enterprise is encouraged and
tostered. With these and other advan.
tages, we must grow in wealth much more
rapidly than the English, and the measure
of national wealth is the measure of
strength to support the burden of a ma
tional debt. hHs-1-
Mr.. Robert ]. Walker sets this question
in q clear light by some statistics which
he has recently printed in London. He
shows that our national wealth was in-
creased in the ten years from 1850 to 1l60
over QUE hundred and tweuty-s six per cent,
while that of England from 1851 to 1861
increased but 81 per cent. He shows from
the census tables, that the ratio of Increase
of our national wealth has been constant,
and always in excess Of the increase of the
population. Thus from 1920 to 1880 our
wealth increased forty one per cent; from
1880 to 1910 forty-two per cent; from
1910 to 1850 sixty-four per cent; and from
1850 to 1860 l26.45 per cent.
live go on at the same rate for another
decade the result will be in 1870 an in
crease of over two hundred and fifty per
cent.
But, he adds, if the product per head of
the population in the slave states had been
the same in 1859 that it was in the free
states, that would have added to the ma
tional wealth an additional value produ.
ced of 81 ,532 ,63l 900, according to official
census returns. Now, the way to make the
southern states as rich and productive as
the northern, and even more so, as Mr..
James Brooks justly observed more than
thirty years ago, during journey in the
south, is to abolish slavery. Substitute
skillful, intelligent, interested free labor
for unskilled, ignorant and uninterested
slave labor, aud as he remarked South
Carolina would be the wealthiest state in
the Union. -t Iarf
Now, We are going to have the assist
ance of this added and hitherto undevel-
oped wealth to pay not only the interest,
ont the principal of our national debt.
With "small farms and divided labor ia
king the place of the ieudsl system" as
Mr.. Brooks says, all the immense unde.
veloped natural resources of the southern
states will vastly increase our national
wealth and prosperity. With slavery abol-
ished, free workingmen will pour by hum
dreds of thousands from all parts of Eu-
rope into region to which mild climate,
a sparse population and high rewards for
labor will tempt them, but from which
they have been hitherto excluded by the
fatal competition of unpaid slave labor
against those who must have ga fair days
wages for fair days work" Emigra-
ton, SO astonishingly great during the last
three years in the midst of war, will in.
crease still more when the area opened
to free Workipgmen is more than doubled;
ana MIR. walker does not oVershoot the
mark when he estimates the increase in
our national wealth, from the substitution
of free for slave labor in the South, in ten
years, at the great sum of over seventeen
thousand millions of dollars, nearly ten
times our present national debt. Thus the
mere addition we shall make in ton years
to our national wealth, by abolishing the
institution" which has been so long a
curse and source of dissension to us,
would many times over pay OUT national
debt. '-..... -
But to show in another way what are
our prospects, Mr.. Walker compares the
future wealth of Great Britain and the
United States, supposing that each increas.
es in the same ratio as during the ten
years for which in each case We have the
latest census returns. It will be remem
pered thatthe increase in the United States
from 1850 to 1860 was l26.45 per cent,
and in Great Britain from 1851 to 1861,
81 per cent. Assuming these ratios
which, however, are unfair towards US
the result would be as llows:
UNITED KINGDOM.