INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS.

351

while the assiduity and efforts of her citizens are beyond all praise. But these exertions, however commendable, would be insufficient to secure their full measure of reward, without being sustained by other pecuniary means, or capital to give an impetus -an energy, and direction to both. The internal improvements of America, we are bound to admit, have within the same restricted period, far exceeded those of every other nation, with infinitely greater difficulties to contend with; while the untiring energy of her population has succeeded, in conjunction with other social, organic, and permanent advantages, in establishing an internal communication of vast undertaking, throughout the several intersections of the country, including railroads to an extent of about 4,000 miles, in addition to a canal navigation of upwards of 3,000 miles, finished, and in progress.

But for these improvements, do we also contend, is America in great part indebted to British capital, which has aided their steady progression, and the development of many of the most important resources of the country. No sooner is any projected measure of any great national advantage set on foot, especially to which any of the individual States may have become parties, by the advance or loan of any certain portion of State stock in its promotion, than these securities, almost as soon as issued, find their way to the English Stock Exchange, where funds are in most cases provided to commence with, and carry on these improvements to their ultimate or final completion. The consequence is, that

the British market of late years has been flooded with this species of property, made worthless in some instances by the subsequent disreputable repudiation of some of these States, in whose name and by whose authority these securities had been issued, and though that such State may have reaped the full and anticipated value of such issue, in the general permanent improvement of their locality, and its reclamation from a state of semi-barbarism to one of comparative culture and civilisation. The money borrowed from English capitalists and merchants by several of these States for public improvements, by banks, railroad, canal, and other companies, the greater part of which will never be paid, is estimated at upwards, of one hundred and fifty millions of dollars.

But this has been the practice from immemorial time,―sustained, as we are in this assertion, by the concurrent testimony of contemporary writers on the same subject. "America," declares Mr. Bristed, (who was himself an American,) in his work on the resources of the United States, "has profited in more ways than one by British capital; that is to say, she has grown rich, not merely by the amount and length of credit which the merchants of Britain gave her, but also, by her own numberless insolvents having made it a point of conscience, never to pay a single stiver to a British creditor. From the peace of 1783 to 1789, the British manufacturers did not receive more than one-third of the value of all the goods which they sold to their American customers;

and since the peace of 1815, up to the present hour, they have not received one-fourth.”

It is by no means surprising, that the credit of the United States should in consequence diverge to the lowest possible standard, or that her national Government, though nearly freed from debt, should have been unable, even so recently as the year 1842, to procure for its own use, a loan in the comparatively restricted sum of two millions sterling. The principle of" repudiation" to which the country had been accustomed in the preceding year, 1841, by which novel, though now familiar process, the States of Mississippi, Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, had relieved themselves from a large portion of their respective debts, and to which discreditable course the United States had given an implied or negative sanction, by withholding the expression of its decided reprehension, or further exertion in influencing these States to return to a more equitable and honest way of thinking and of acting, has to some extent identified her with these proceedings, excited the apprehensions of foreign capitalists, and occasioned an unwillingness to enter into any negotiation or arrangement with her Government; apprehensive, that the loan she needed in this late instance, and had endeavoured to obtain without success amongst her own capitalists, and subsequently in the British and other European markets, if conceded to her, might be made the nucleus of a national debt, that in the unsettled and disorganised state of American finances, might there2 A

VOL. I.

after be augmented to a still larger amount, according to the increased demands and necessities of the country; and that should the revenue at any future period, (as in 1838 and subsequent years,) fall short of the necessary expenditure of the Government, they could see nothing to prevent the Federal power from adopting the principle and following the practice of these States, in a more general disclaimer of its liabilities, whenever, under its present or any future subsisting tariff law, its resources might be unable to pay the interest, or meet the other requisite expenses of the country.

The injury to the nation in the prostration of its credit,—the disgrace which overwhelmed the entire people, by reason of the nefarious and fraudulent system to which so many of the States have resorted, has inflicted upon the Republic the most humiliating consequences. It has forced the Government to seek, in an unbecoming and almost supplicatory tone, for sufficient means to carry on the necessary general business of the country, amidst the monied capitalists of Europe, and to proclaim to the world the disparaging rejection of every succeeding application.

"After a failure to raise a loan in the American market," declares President Tyler in his annual message in opening the Congressional session of 1842-43, "a citizen of high character and talent was sent to Europe with no better success; and thus the mortifying spectacle has been presented of the inability of this Government to obtain a loan

so small, as not in the whole to amount to onefourth of its ordinary annual income, at a time when the Governments of Europe, although involved in debt and with their subjects heavily burdened with taxation, readily obtained loans of any amount at a greatly reduced rate of interest. It would be unprofitable to look further into this state of things, but I cannot conclude without adding, that for a Government that has paid off its debts of two wars with the largest maritime power of Europe, and now owing a debt which is next to nothing when compared to its boundless resources, -a Government, the strongest in the world, because emanating from the popular will, and firmly rooted in the affections of a great and free people; whose fidelity to its engagements has never been questioned; for such a Government to have tendered to the capitalists of other countries an opportunity for a small investment of its stock, and yet to have failed, implies either the most unfounded mistrust in its good faith, or a purpose, to obtain which the course pursued is the most fatal which could have been adopted."

This is, in very truth, a lamentable portraiture of a country such as the United States; a saddened instance of the consequences resulting from the dishonesty and bad faith of her own citizens, which has clouded her prosperity-assailed her reputation, and overshadowed all her former efforts to sustain herself in the position and on the level of the nations of the world: for it is impossible to dis