any man of the issue, is that we may be able to get out of the war without a cessation of territory.
Look, Sir, to the finances of the country. What a picture do they exhibit of the wisdom & prudence & foresight of Government. "The revenue of a State," says a profound writer, "is the state." If we are to judge of the condition of the country by the condition of its revenues, what is the result? A wise Government sinks deep the fountain of its revenues—not only till it can touch the first springs, & slake the present thirst of the Treasury, but till lasting sources are opened, too abundant to be exhausted by demand, too deep to be affected by heats & droughts. What, Sir, is our present supply, & what our provision for future resource? I forebear to speak of the present condition of the Treasury; & as to public credit, the last reliance of Government, I use the language of Government itself only, when I say it does not exist. This is a state of things calling for the soberest counsels, & yet it seems to meet only the wildest speculations. Nothing is talked of but Banks, & a circulating paper medium, & Exchequer Notes, & the thousand other contrivances, which ingenuity, vexed & goaded by the direst necessity, can devise, with the vain hope of giving value to mere paper. All these things are not revenue, nor do they produce it. They are the effect of a productive commerce, & a well ordered system of finance, & in their operation may be favorable to both, but are not the cause of either. In other times these facilities existed. Bank paper & Government paper circulated, because both rested on substantial capital or solid credit. Without these they will not circulate, nor is there a device more shallow or more mischievous, than to pour forth new floods of paper without credit as a remedy for the evils which paper without credit has already created. As was intimated the other day by my honorable friend from North Carolina (Mr. Gaston) this is an attempt to act over again the farce of the Assignats of France. Indeed, Sir, our politicians appear to have but one school. They learn every thing of modern France; with this variety only, that for examples of revenue they go to the Revolution, when her revenue was in the worst state possible, while their model for military force is sought after in her imperial era, when her military was organized on principles the most arbitrary & abominable.
Let us examine the nature & extent of the power, which is assumed by the various military measures before us. In the present want of men & money, the Secretary of War has proposed to
