wn again into the framework of a miniature with the returning
temperature of civil life, and became a power wellnigh invisible, from
its minuteness, amidst the powers which sway the movements of a society
exceeding forty millions.

More remarkable still was the financial sequel to the great conflict.
The internal taxation for Federal purposes, which before its
commencement had been unknown, was raised, in obedience to an exigency
of life and death, so as to exceed every present and every past example.
It pursued and worried all the transactions of life. The interest of the
American debt grew to be the highest in the world, and the capital
touched five hundred and sixty millions sterling. Here was provided for
the faith and patience of the people a touchstone of extreme severity.
In England, at the close of the great French war, the propertied
classes, who were supreme in Parliament, at once rebelled against the
Tory Government, and refused to prolong the income tax even for a single
year. We talked big, both then and now, about the payment of our
national debt; but sixty-three years have since elapsed, all of them
except two called years of peace, and we have reduced the huge total by
about one ninth; that is to say, by little over one hundred millions, or
scarcely more than one million and a half a year. This is the conduct of
a State elaborately digested into orders and degrees, famed for wisdom
and forethought, and consolidated by a long experience. But America
continued long to bear, on her unaccustomed and still smarting
shoulders, the burden of the war taxation. In twelve years she has
reduced her debt by one hundred and fifty-eight millions sterling, or at
the rate of thirteen millions for every year. In each twelve months she
has done what we did in eight years; her self-command, self-denial, and
wise forethought for the future have been, to say the least, eightfold
ours. These are facts which redound greatly to her honor; and the
historian will record with surprise that an enfranchised nation
tolerated burdens which in this country a selected class, possessed of
the representation, did not dare to face, and that the most unmitigated
democracy known to the annals of the world resolutely reduced at its own
cost prospective liabilities of the State, which the aristocratic, and
plutocratic, and monarchical government of the United Kingdom has been
contented ignobly to hand over to posterity. And such facts should be