spective antagonists is their way of raising means for their struggle. The Confederate authorities rely on getting an opportunity of selling the cotton and tobacco they have collected as tribute: but this mode of taxation was not resorted to till they had got all they could by direct levies and confiscations, and seizure of debts due to the North. They advocate direct taxation with a vengeance though as far as can well be from liking democratic government. Their rule has always been oligarchical and extremely despotic; yet their mode of taxation is the most direct that can be seen anywhere in the world. Meantime, in the democratic North, the Finance Minister brings forward a scheme of an opposite character, and there are still champions of the Morrill tariff. This latter production,—the creature of ignorance and cunning,—will soon be beyond the reach of argument. It is remarkable; and perhaps it required an absurdity as great as this to rouse the mercantile class and the consuming public to resistance to the class-legislation of the manufacturers: but it will remain on record as a proof of the backward state of political economy among an enlightened and business-like people. It really seems as if nobody was qualified to check the nonsense that is talked by the promoters of the most suicidal commercial scheme of modern times; for the public takes no effectual notice while desperate injuries are inflicted on trade, and has no correction ready for journalists who write about it without any idea of the bearing of what they say. While such a thing can be, it is no wonder that Mr. Chase proposes a scheme in which direct taxation bears a very small share. The Morrill tariff was made foolishly unproductive by the protection to native industry being made to depend more on obstruction in the Custom House than amount of duty. Its advocates think they have defended it perfectly when they show that there are articles on which the duty is not so high as in former tariffs; and they either do not see, or do not wish their neighbours to see, that it is the amount of obstruction of any kind, keeping out foreign commodities, which constitutes the prohibition, and not necessarily the one impediment of a high duty. Nobody gains, however, by the waste of time and toil which the Morrill tariff imposes; and if the prohibition of foreign manufactures is determined upon, it is a pity that the Government should not have the benefit,—dearly bought as we know it would be—of high duties, rather than that everybody’s temper should be tried by the most singular aggregate of inconveniences that could be devised. It pays nobody that the duty should be charged in part by weight, and in part ad valorem. It profits nobody that merchants and officials should be for ever unpacking and repacking goods in transit, and counting threads, and measuring inches, and weighing and computing till nobody has any temper left. A heavy duty would be better for the Government, and no worse for seller, shipper, and buyer. But then the champions of the tariff could not defend it for being, and for not being protectionist, at the same time.
Heavy duties on coffee, tea, and sugar come under another head, as those commodities do not compete with any Northern products; and it may be as well to have more than one method of taxation. Taxes on exotic commodities are not altogether indefensible in a democratic republic, as protective duties are. But it does seem strange that so little attention appears to be directed towards a method of direct taxation which seems to be actually required by republican principle. It may be very true that the South may be made to pay by Customs duties, while no kind of direct taxation could at present be enforced. This may justify the tea and coffee duties; but it remains evident that the readiest, fairest, completest, and most democratic method of taxation is an income tax for the twenty millions of Northern people. Yet the idea seems not even to have been considered by anybody there. Perhaps one of the ultimate gains of the war,—again reaped from its losses,—may be that political economy may obtain some attention. I am aware that it is professed in colleges, and written about by antagonists of Ricardo, Malthus, and Adam Smith: but the history and mystery of the Morrill tariff, passed in April, and followed by the war budget of the Government in July, are enough to show how much American society has to learn in the economical province of its politics.
Open, manifest, indisputable above everything, is the noble spirit of the people at large, now that the first burst of enthusiasm would have been over if it had not been genuine, and at the moment when the whole significance of the war is disclosed. They know now what loss or ruin of fortune most of them must incur: they have felt something of the toil and privation of military service; and the amount of needless, wanton, exasperating slaughter might well sicken the general heart. Yet there is no flinching. The President’s call for 400,000 men is met as eagerly as his prior call for 75,000. When he asks whether they will raise 80,000,000l. for the national service, they say “O yes,” as if he asked for 80,000l. When the old family tombs of the Forefathers are opened, to admit the coffin of some gallant representative of each, the next brother starts off for the battle-field, as soon as the “Amen” is said over the grave. The betrothed girl waves her handkerchief with a smile as he who should have been her husband next week marches past for the South, and faints away when he is past the corner. The aged mother paces her room for hours, when she is weary of making lint, and finds her Bible brings the tears too fast. Except a very few cowards, traitors, and sordid trimmers, who try to raise a call for compromise, there seems to be no defection from this splendour of patriotism. This is the broadest, plainest, weightiest, and most brilliant fact of all that strikes the eye.
Meantime, there is something behind, deep in the shade, almost shrouded in silence, yet occupying intelligent people more than all the rest together; something which we long to know about, and on which at last we can gather some light, if we try. What about the negroes? Slavery left a great flaw in the original Republic. Slavery has prevented half the States from ever being republican at all; slavery bred the antagonism which has issued in this war; and the
