ico; and on the next day President Polk issued his proclamation of war. In March, 1847, General Scott took command, and overran Mexico, capturing her chief cities, and among them the capital. The whole country was in our power, and virtually in our possession. Peace was made by a treaty on the 21 of February, 1848, by which we retained, as a part of our country, New Mexico and California. Texas had already been admitted as a State in 1845. This war was honorable to our arms. But whether this attack upon a feeble neighbor, and taking from her nearly half of her territory, was honorable to our country and to our government, may be questioned. But to this war we owe the possession of California, the peculiar value of which territory was then unknown. THE FIFTH WAR. This war is still in everybody's recollection. It was the war between the United States of America and the Confederate States. It began by the attack on Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, on the 12th of April, 1861, and continued for four years, when, on the 8th of April, 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant. There was no declaration of war, no treaty of peace. It was a CIVIL WAR. It was fought only between parties and regions of the same country. And yet it was the greatest war ever waged on earth, whether we measure it by the extent of country over which it reached, or by its enormous expenditure of treasure and of life; for nearly a million of lives were lost and ten thousand millions of dollars expended. It was a war between the States which permitted slavery and those which did not. It résulted in the extinction of slavery throughout the country; and at this day, in every part of the land, there is no difference in law between the white race and the black race. SECTION XIV. POWER TO BORROW MONEY. Congress has power "to borrow money on the credit of the United States." As the world now goes, it was perhaps necessary that Congress should have this power, and perhaps necessary that Congress should exercise this power. But the whole business of running in debt, whether for a man or a nation, is a dangerous thing. National indebtedness was unknown in ancient times; and only within a century or two has it grown into its present enormous magnitude. England set the example; and its national debt seemed a century ago to cautious men an intolerable burden, when it was hardly more than the interest which is now paid annually. The present debt of that country is now but little less than four thousand millions of dollars; and some of their wisest men have said that the idea of ever paying it is, in fact, abandoned, nothing being hoped or attempted but such a continuation of the prosperity of the country as shall enable it to sustain the taxation necessary to pay the interest. Even that has become of late years problematical. If the commerce and manufactures of those islands should receive any material check, the necessary taxation would become intolerable, and would no longer be borne. Disguise it in whatever ways may be devised, the taxation to pay the interest of a national debt is just so much contributed by the wages of labor and the profits of business, and the food drawn from the land. How is it in our own country? We have always maintained not only the purpose, but the effort, to pay it off. In the years 1835 and 1836 our national debt was paid in full (excepting a trifling amount, which for special reasons remained some time longer unpaid); but it began to grow again, and not very slowly. The late war caused an enormous increase of the debt,- from $88,498,000 to $2,757,253,000. But to the honor of our country be it said, that, on the return of peace, measures were at once adopted not merely to pay the interest, but gradually, and not very slowly, to pay the principal. It has already been reduced from the sum last mentioned, which was the amount of the debt on the 1st of July, 1865, and the highest amount reached during the war, to $2,141,833,000. It is not to be denied, however, that efforts by some men have been made not only to withhold payment of the promised interest, but to give up all endeavor to pay the principal. As yet they have not succeeded. It may be hoped they will never succeed. Heavy as the burden is, we can bear it better than the heavier burden of national disgrace. Let us preserve our nation's honor by national honesty; for if we were moved even by the lower motives, we might still see that national discredit would be a great national loss. Let us try to lift this burden off the nation as soon as we can, without excessive effort, that it may not press as a permanent misfortune upon our posterity. A dim feeling that "posterity has done nothing for us, why should we do so much for posterity," may enter some minds, and more perhaps than are conscious of it. But our forefathers did every thing for us. To their wisdom, their efforts, their sacrifices, we owe all we have and all we are. We can repay our debt to them only by acting for posterity as they did for us. SECTION XV. POWER TO COIN MONEY. This is always recognized as a right which belongs necessarily to every independent sovereignty. A coin is a piece of metal on which some sovereign, prince, or State has placed its symbol, and thereby declared that the piece of metal contains a certain quantity of a certain purity. They rest upon the faith and Coins are the money of the world. honesty of the State which issues them. not money; it is only the promise to pay money. It is comparatively a modern invention. While it is convertible at pleasure into coins, and is received as coined money because so convertible, it is then the representative of money, but itself is never money. Formerly, before the invention of paper money and national indebtedness, governments in great straits resorted to the device of "debasing the coin," as it was called. That is, a king would make a coin of gold or silver, with the mark that declared it to contain, we will say, an ounce of silver, and he would put one-fourth of an ounce of lead into it, making it contain only three-fourths of an ounce of silver. This seemed to give him a quarter part of all his coinage for the price of lead! Sometimes this debasement would take place secretly, the king hoping that it would not be discovered. Sometimes it was avowed, and the king would make a law that the new coins should be taken as of the same value with the old ones. Equally foolish was he to hope that his secret would not be found out, or that his law could make lead worth as much as silver. Debasement of the coin is never practised now, because the use of national paper money has taken place, and answers the same purpose. All States now use this. Perhaps they will find out that they are equally foolish with the king above mentioned. As time goes on, and the world becomes wiser, it may perhaps discover that the legal substitution of promises to pay, instead of paying, while it may give immediate relief, and even a flush of prosperity, is necessarily followed, sooner or later, by a period of equal, if not greater, depression and disaster. When the exigencies of the late war pressed with almost crushing weight upon our government, they yielded to the necessity. Up to that time, only money could legally satisfy a debt or promise to pay money; in other words, only money was a legal tender. But the government, by law, made their own promises to pay money a legal tender in the stead of money; and thus paper money came into universal use, and actual money disappeared. There was some effort to give this measure a constitutional sanc. tion, under the power given to Congress "to coin money and regulate the value thereof." But it was vain and meaningless. The measure rested simply upon overpowering necessity; and on that ground it might be defended as a thing that was done because it was impossible to create and use the means necessary for the preservation of our national existence without doing it. That is to say, it may be defended on the ground of an overruling necessity, and on no other. It was a case of national life or death. At the time, many sensible men thought it would be better to go on without making paper money legal, and raise whatever sums were necessary by loans. But these sums were so enormous, that public credit would have gradually sunk so low (if it did not wholly perish) that the national bonds would have brought a very low price, and the debt would have exceeded all possibility of payment; and the interest payable thereon required a taxation which could not have been endured, and would have ended in repudiation; that is, in national bankruptcy and dishonor. Our experience in the comparatively trifling war with Great Britain in 1812 may give us some instruction. Then our bonds were sold at from 15 to 25 per cent discount, the government receiving their payments in bills of banks that did not pay specie; and, in fact, the government borrowed money at enormous rates. Had we tried the same thing in the civil war, the banks throughout the country must have suspended, and the government have carried on the war with their paper, and not with gold and silver; and when things were at their worst, and money was needed most, our bonds would not have brought half their nominal amount. As it was, very skilful financiering was required to carry us along. And, on the whole, it may be believed that our condition at this time, bad as it is, is certainly no worse than it would have been had the government attempted to struggle through our difficulties on a hard money basis. It is certain, however, that they who concluded to resort to paper money as the best thing they could do, accepting it as a necessity forced upon them by the war, had no thought of its continuing much beyond the war. They supposed, and the nation supposed, that as soon as peace was established, the necessity of paper money would pass away, and the law making it a legal tender would be repealed. So it has not been. At this day, after nine years of peace, we have only paper money in use, and as much of it as ever; and no settled and definite plan has yet been adopted to relieve us from this heavy burden. It is undoubtedly a principal cause of the low credit of the United States in the markets of the world, in comparison with that of nations some of which have not one-tenth of our resources. This costs us much, in many ways. What it costs us in one way may be learned from a comparison of our debt and interest with the debt and interest of Great Britain. We may call our debt, in round numbers, two thousand millions. It is, as already stated, a little more. It costs us annually about one hundred millions, or 5 per cent. The debt of Great Britain is but little less than four thousand millions (exactly $3,924,860,000), and it costs them annually about one hundred and twenty millions, or 3 per cent. At this moment there is no question more interesting to the people than when and how we can be done with paper money as a legal tender, and take our place among the nations whose business rests upon a gold and silver basis. Everybody admits the expediency, and indeed the necessity, of doing this. Everybody knows that when it takes place there must be a universal shrinking of values, and, may be, a universal distress. Everybody is therefore seeking for a plan which will do away with irredeemable paper money as soon as may be, and with the least possible disturbance and distress in the community. Innumerable are the plans proposed. All that can be said here is, that it may be hoped that some one will be selected, and then adhered to firmly. Whether it is the best plan, or the second best, or the third best, is not of so much consequence as that it is one which, in the end, will accomplish its purpose; and that it be carried out into full effect, steadily and constantly, in despite of the clamorous begging for relief which is sure to be heard in those troublous times which are sure to come. If any such plan were adopted, and the conviction that it would be adhered to fixed in the public mind, this conviction would of itself accomplish half the purpose of the plan of recovery. SECTION XVI. OF NATURALIZATION. All that the constitution says upon the subject is, that Congress has among its powers one "to establish a uniform rule of naturalization." There were wise men among the framers of the constitution; but the wisest of them could not have anticipated the vast immigration into this country which has taken place. The subject excited little attention; for we find in the journal of the convention that it gave |