We will presume, for
argument's sake, that the revenue arising from the impost duties answers
the purposes of a provision for the public debt and of a peace
establishment for the Union. Thus circumstanced, a war breaks out. What
would be the probable conduct of the government in such an emergency?
Taught by experience that proper dependence could not be placed on the
success of requisitions, unable by its own authority to lay hold of
fresh resources, and urged by considerations of national danger, would
it not be driven to the expedient of diverting the funds already
appropriated from their proper objects to the defense of the State? It
is not easy to see how a step of this kind could be avoided; and if it
should be taken, it is evident that it would prove the destruction of
public credit at the very moment that it was becoming essential to the
public safety. To imagine that at such a crisis credit might be
dispensed with, would be the extreme of infatuation. In the modern
system of war, nations the most wealthy are obliged to have recourse to
large loans. A country so little opulent as ours must feel this
necessity in a much stronger degree.
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