Yankee expenditures.
--The Yankees have already taken the alarm at the enormous expenditure instituted by the present Administration to carry on the war against the South. The Cincinnati Enquirer, in an article republished by us yesterday, tells us that six hundred millions form no trifle of a debt for the Yankee nation to bear, whatever President Lincoln may think of it. It adverts to the significant fact that it is more than one-seventh of the debt left upon the shoulders of Great Britain by eight hundred years of war. The wealth of the United States, it observes, is not more than one-tenth part the wealth of Great Britain, and consequently it will be harder for the United States to bear a debt of six hundred millions than it is for Great Britain to bear her present debt of four thousand millions. The interest on $600,000,000 at six per cent. is $36,000,000, fully as much as the customs yield annually, upon an average. It would be necessary, therefore, to raise the sum required for the expenses of the Government by direct taxation, and the principal would have to be paid, if it ever was paid, by an assessment upon the pockets of the people. The funding of this debt would create an aristocracy, and grind down the poorer classes. Taxes upon tea, coffee, sugar, molasses — upon all articles of luxury or necessity — would necessarily follow, and would be added to the State, municipal, and corporation debts under which Yankeedom already groans. Such is a Yankee estimate of the consequences dependent upon the creation of a debt of six hundred millions.But suppose this war should last ten years. What will be the state of the case then? The Yankee Government is spending at this moment $8,500,000 a week — that is, $442,000,000 a year. Since the revenue from customs is only $36,000,000 a year, it is impossible to suppose that a dollar of the principal thus accumulating will be paid off in the interval. Every year it will be necessary to raise a fresh sum of $442,000,000. This year the Yankee pays interest on $600,000,000 and he is directly taxed to do it.--Next year he pays the interest on $600,000,000, the old debt, and a fresh debt of $442,000,000; or, casting up the whole sum, he pays the interest next year on $1,042,000,000, which in round numbers is $60,000,000. Thus his taxes are raised every year $36,000,000, and at the end of the ten years he finds his country upwards of five thousand millions in debt, and he is taxed to assist in paying an interest reaching the enormous figure of $300,000,000. Now, the total annual charge for interest management, &c., of the funded national debt of Great Britain never exceeded £42,000,000 sterling, or about $210,000,000, and it only reached this figure in 1816, the year after the Great French wars were finished. The Cincinnati Enquirer says that the wealth of Great Britain is ten times as great as that of the Yankees. We know not the relative value of property in the two countries; but this we know: that in 1816, the period when Great Britain paid most interest, the public and private property of the British Empire exceeded four thousand millions of pounds sterling, that is twenty thousand millions of dollars, and that the aggregate annual income in Great Britain and Ireland exceeded four hundred million of pounds sterling, or two thousand millions of dollars. Have the Yankees any such basis as this to found the creation of a larger debt, bearing a larger interest, upon?
By the creation of this enormous debt, the Yankees destroy everything of which they have heretofore boasted. They destroy their manufactures, for the taxes will be so high that they cannot afford to manufacture. They destroy commerce, for it cannot exist under such a load of taxation. They destroy their cities, for taxation must render it impossible for any but wealthy men to rent houses. They reduce the price of labor so low that the operatives in the factories cannot live, and the laborers on the farms must be content with the coarsest food. They cut up immigration by the roots, for foreigners will not come to America to be taxed as highly as they are taxed at home. They deal a death-blow to all public improvements; for who will buy railroad or canal shares when they are taxed so highly that they yield no profit? The wretchedness that must settle down upon all Yankeedom is beyond conception, and yet the value of these Southern States to them was so great that they are willing to encounter it all, rather than part with them.
