Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow A P P E N D I X T O V O L U M E S E C O N D - History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution vol. 2

Return to Title Page for History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution vol. 2

Search this Title:

A P P E N D I X T O V O L U M E S E C O N D - Mercy Otis Warren, History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution vol. 2 [1805]

Edition used:

History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution interspersed with Biographical, Political and Moral Observations, in Two Volumes, Foreword by Lester H. Cohen (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund 1994).

Part of: History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution 2 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


A P P E N D I X T O V O L U M E S E C O N D

[Continued]

Note No. IX. Page 410.

[411] Governor Trumbull observed thus:

The only obstacle which I foresee to the settlement of foreigners in the country, will be the taxes, which must inevitably for a time run high, for the payment of the debts contracted during the present war. These, indeed, will be much lightened by the care which has been taken, to confine these debts as much as possible among ourselves, and by emitting a paper currency in place of borrowing from abroad. But this method, though it secures the country from being drained hereafter, of immense sums of solid coin, which can never return, has exposed us to a new and very disagreeable embarrassment, by its monstrous depreciation. An evil which had its rise in, and owes all its rapid increase to the single cause of our not having provided at a sufficiently early period, for its reduction and payment by taxes. This measure was indeed rendered impracticable, at the proper time, by the radical derangement of the system of government, and consequently of revenue in many of the United States; and its [412] necessary delay till the removal of these impediments, gave time for avarice and suspicion to unite in sapping the foundations of our internal credit.

He adds,

I am no advocate for internal or foreign loans. In my opinion, they are like cold water in a fever, which allays the disease for a moment, but soon causes it to rage with a redoubled violence; temporary alleviations, but ultimately real additions to the burden. The debts which we have already contracted, or may hereafter be necessitated to contract abroad, I have not a doubt, but will be paid with the utmost punctuality and honor; and there can be no surer foundation of credit, than we possess in the rapidly increasing value and importance of our country.

In short, it is not so much my wish that the United States should gain credit among foreign nations, for the loan of money, as that all nations, and especially your countrymen in Holland, should be made acquainted with the real state of the American war. The importance and greatness of this rising empire, the future extensive value of our commerce, the advantages of colonization, are objects which need only to be known, to command your attention, protection, and support.

Give me leave most sincerely to express my grief, that the efforts you have made for the removal of oppression in your own country, and for extending the blessings of liberty and plenty to the poor, should have met with so ungrateful a return of persecution and insult. Unhappy state of man! where opulence and power conspire to load the poor, the defenceless, and the innocent, with accumulated misery; where an unworthy few join to embitter the life of half their fellow men, that they may wallow in the excess of luxurious debauch, or shine in the splendid trappings of folly.