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Show THE COST OF MONARCHY AND DEMOCRACY. Another favorite subject is the burden of taxation and the amount of public expenditure. expendi-ture. Of all the pretensions of democratic government none is more false than that it is cheap.- It is the dearest in the world, because be-cause the claims made on the Treasury or the public purse in the name of the sovereign sover-eign people are irresistible. The two great Republics of the United States and France enjoy the sinister privilege of supporting the largest debts that ever existed and the heav- : iest amount of interests ar exceeding that j National Debt of England, after twenty I Tears of war. which w fdmoriu tha I der of the world. Such are the opinion and assertion of a writer in the Edinburgh Review for July, 1885. The impression conveyed by the above is false, and it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the above was written with the purpose of conveying a false impression. The impression conveyed con-veyed by the above is that the Government Govern-ment of the United States contracted its enormous debt through mismanagement and a pandering to popular prejudices. To one unacquainted with the history of our national debt, the idea here given is that it is the result of great salaries to Presidents and Senators and Representatives, Representa-tives, and to all other employes of the Government. Let us examine the cause of our national debt and compare it with the debt of England. The debt of the United States on the first day of January, 1791, was $75,463,-47G.52. $75,463,-47G.52. This debt was the result of a long war with England, a war in which the Colonies sought to and did free themselves them-selves from the tyranny of England. In 1812 the debt of the United States was 145,209,737.90, a reduction of $30,253,-1 738.62 in twenty-one years. From 1812 to 1815 the debt of the United States in- creased $14,623,922.25. Why should the debt of the United States increase over fourteen and a half millions of" dollars from 1812ito 1815? Because, during that time the United States sustained a second sec-ond war with England, and this readily explains the great increase in the debt of the United States during dur-ing those years. In 1861 civil war broke out in the United States, and lasted four years. The debt of the United States on the first day of July, 1861, v x $90,580,873.72. In 1842 the fiscal year of the United States was made to begin on the first day of July instead of on the first day of January, as theretofore. The civil war in the United States came to a close with the surrender of Lee at Appomattox Appo-mattox Court House; April 12, 1865, which was just four years and one day after Fort Sumter was fired upon. The debt of the United States . reached it's maximum in 1866, when it reached the enormous sum of $2,773,236,173.69. On-the On-the first day of July, 1834, the debt of the i United States was $1,830,528,923.57. In j eighteen years, then, the United States had paid $942,707,250.12. J What did the country gain by this immense im-mense expenditure of treasure? It preserved pre-served the Union, and thereby kept one- j half of the country, and this simple fact alone, considered as a monetary matter alone, justified the outlay. The gain to ! mankind and liberty through the preser-vation preser-vation of the American Union is beyond ! computation on a money basis. " I We see, then, that the enormous debt ! lot the United States was contracted to I preserve a Government, and in so pre-I pre-I serving the Government, demonstrated the capacity of man for self-government and the strength of free government Now, let us look at the debt of England, and see if, by the monetary testmon-archy testmon-archy is any cheaper than democracy. At the commencement of the French war in 1793, the debt of Great Britain was 247,874,434. At the Peace of 1 Amiens, 1S02, the debt of TJreat Britain was 537,653,008, an increase during the thirteen years of war of 337,783,837. Af j the Peace of Paris, in September, 1815, i the date terminating the twenty years' I war spoken of by the Edinburgh reviewer, j the debt of Great Britain was 900,436,- i - 845.- From 1815 to 1855 the decrease in Great Britain's debt was 91,918,397. During the war with Russia t he increase in the debt was 30,399,995. Since 1857, England has had no Continental wars, although she has had many minor wars. On March 31, 1884, the end of the English Eng-lish fiscal year, the debt of Great Britain was 746,423,96-. If we call the English pound sterling equal to our half eagle, although in reality it only equals $4.84 of American . money, we find ' that the debt of England is $3,732,119,820, which exceeds the debt of the Uni- ted Stries over eleven hundred millions of dollars. The showing is in favor of the United States as against England, and democracy as against monarchy. mon-archy. We have not time or space to go into a comparison of the civil and naval and military lists of the two Governments, but there the result would be greatly.in favor of democracy as against monarchy. A few words in regard to the debt of France. At the close of the fiscal j'ear, .1883, the debt of France was $4,750,337,- 109, which was incurred on account of monarchy and not on account of democracy. democ-racy. It was the Franco-German war of 1870 which piled up the debt of France beyond precedent and conception, but that war was began in the interest of an effete and corrupt monarchy.- Our reviewer was dishonest in his reference refer-ence to the debts of the great Republics of modern times, and he cited the debts ,of these two Republics for sinister "and false purposes.' The facts and figures refute his imputation upon democracy, while they are a silent praise of the superiority supe-riority of democracy over monarchy. |