The question of revenue we will now briefly consider. For several years
past the revenues of the government have been unequal to its
expenditures, and consequently loan after loan, sometimes direct and
sometimes indirect in form, has been resorted to. By this means a new
national debt has been created, and is still growing on us with a
rapidity fearful to contemplate--a rapidity only reasonably to be
expected in time of war. This state of things has been produced by a
prevailing unwillingness either to increase the tariff or resort to
direct taxation. But the one or the other must come. Coming
expenditures must be met, and the present debt must be paid; and money
cannot always be borrowed for these objects. The system of loans is but
temporary in its nature, and must soon explode. It is a system not only
ruinous while it lasts, but one that must soon fail and leave us
destitute. As an individual who undertakes to live by borrowing soon
finds his original means devoured by interest, and, next, no one left to
borrow from, so must it be with a government.
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