Pecuniary results of a Southern Confederations.
Every great measure has its profit and loss account — its advantages as well as its disadvantages.
The American colonies, in throwing off the yoke, lost many brave men, many hard-earned dollars, much valuable property, and eight long years of what might have proved most prosperous times; but they gained the priceless jewel of liberty — they planted themselves on the staunch platform of independence, whereon has been erected our splendid fabric of greatness and power.
If the
Union must be dissolved — If this glorious fabric must be levelled to the dust, contrary to the wishes of the
South, and in spite of her last twenty years effort to save it, then it becomes her sons to banish as far as possible all useless regrets, and to turn their eyes away from the gloomy aspects of the subject to the contemplation of the bright features which even this picture presents.
Magnificent as was this glittering structure of Union, its cost to the
South was on a scale commensurate with its splendor.
We shall not stop at this time to prove that its cost to the
South, through the Tariff, during the last ten years, has been equivalent to two-thirds of all the revenues collected, amounting to an average of nearly sixty millions per annum; for the tariff is levied exclusively upon the foreign commerce of the country, and the
South furnishes two-thirds of the exports which support this foreign commerce;--although numbering but one-third of the population of the
Union, she pays two-thirds of the federal revenue, or thirty-eight to forty millions of dollars, whereas she is justly chargeable with only twenty millions.
Now, the difference between twenty and thirty-eight to forty millions of dollars a year is a very large sum of money, and, when counted for periods of ten years or more, amounts to an enormous capital for the "poor" South to lose and the "rich" North to gain by the
Union.
To make the matter worse, not even one-third of the public revenue is expended within her limits; but the great bulk of it, though contributed by herself, is disbursed at the
North.
Behold in this single fact, which has been in operation on a gradually increasing scale for three-quarters of a century, the real secret of the great preponderance of the
North in manufactures, shipping and commercial power.
Some of the public men of
Virginia talk lugubriously of the frightful taxation which will be entailed upon the
State by dissolution, in war debts and extraordinary war expenditures; but no figures which they can possibly marshal on this account can approximate the enormous drain of Southern capital and wealth which must continue to go on under the
Union and its tariff.
The South exported last year $250,000,000 of products to foreign countries, and is supposed to have sent at least $100,000,000 more to the
North.
These exports, or else her returns of $350,000,000 of imports taken in exchange for them, present a basis of revenue well calculated to dispel any fears of public bankruptcy which even her most despondent citizens might entertain.
A duty as low as 10 per cent, upon this trade would give a revenue of $35,000,000 for the support of her political system under a Southern Confederacy.
Now, the
Southern people have felt too bitterly the burden of a "splendid government," under the
Union, to be willing to repeat the expensive folly in a Confederacy of their own. They would eschew the scheme of a complete Federal Government, surrounded with all the costly trappings of imperial power, and content themselves with a mere Federal Agency, such as
Patrick Henry and
George Mason esteemed sufficient to answer all federal purposes, and such as the
Government at
Washington was originally designed to be. Such an agency would be as cheap in its administration as simple in its structure; scarcely costing on a peace footing more than five millions a year, and not exceeding more than an average of fifteen millions per annum in long periods embracing all the contingencies in peace and war. But even the latter expenditures would leave $20,000,000 to spare from the thirty-five millions which a ten per cent, tariff would produce on the trade of the
South--a sum which would more than defray all the expenses of her State government, the grand total of which for 1859 was less than $15,000,000. Thus dissolution, so far from being a ruinous loss to the
South, would prove a splendid speculation, by stopping the exhausting drain of the present continental tariff, and relieving the whole Southern people of the burden of direct taxation for State expenditures.
The fifteen millions of general outlay would furnish means for the support of a cordon of customs offices along the border of the
North, which would serve the double purpose of collecting the tariff due on Northern fabrics, and of apprehending fugitive negroes in their passage along the underground railroad.
But in order to realize these results,
Virginia would have to attach herself to the fortunes of the
Gulf States, who furnish nearly the whole of this immense exportation of $350,000,000. It is only by this means that she could reap the double advantage of participating in the revenue based upon these exports, and obtaining release from the burdensome taxation entailed by the
Northern tariff and the costly Government at
Washington.
Nor would she have any reason to fear that her Southern confederates would be unwilling to foster her infant manufactures.
These States have been willing to foster even Northern manufactures, at the enormous cost already shown.
Much more readily will they consent to grant all needful encouragement to the manufactures of a Southern sister State, bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh, if she but promptly bring to their cause all the moral, political, and historical weight, attaching to the name of
Virginia.
