Cost of Standing armies.
The New York
Tribune has made a calculation that it will cost
South Carolina six millions a year to support ten thousand volunteers.
If ten thousand troops cost
South Carolina six millions a year, how much will it cost to support an army large enough to demolish the "ten thousand?" We take it for granted that one man, in defending his own fire-side and all that makes life precious and sacred, is equal at least to two aggressors.
It would require at least twenty thousand Southerners to invade and conquer a Northern army of defence of not half that number, and it would require twenty thousand Northern men to conquer a Southern army of ten thousand, fighting for their fire-sides, in sight of the graves of their fathers, and with their mothers, sisters, wives and sweethearts looking on.--At all events, in view of the cost of transporting an invading army from the
North to
South Carolina, and of the additional dangers of a hot climate and its pestilential diseases, we may safely assume that the cost of an army of invasion, sufficient for this conquest of >"the ten thousand," would be double that of the army of defence.
In addition to the volunteers,
South Carolina can raise an army of forty thousand militia, that "cheap defence of nations," which can be called upon occasionally, as emergency demands, and will be equally efficient with regulars for purposes of defence.
We should say that the largest Northern State in this Union would find its exchequer in a tight place before it has finished equipping, transporting, and keeping in the field the hundred thousand men, which, at the smallest calculation, will be required for such a project as the subjugation of
South Carolina.
If the
General Government is expected to expend the sixty million a year which would be necessary for such a purpose, it would be the
General Government of the
Northern, not the
Southern States; for upon the first attempt to reduce any State in the
South by the sword, every Southern State in the
Union will fly to her side.
There is no necessity of arguing this point.
Right or wrong, such is the sentiment of every Southern heart.
"Our country, may she be ever in the right, but right or wrong, our country," is the feeling towards the
South which inspires all Southern bosoms.
Hence, besides the fifty thousand fighting men of
South Carolina, there would be two hundred thousand in
Virginia; or, in all the
Southern States, a million of armed men. If that million be a source of vast expense, even in a section whose staples now pay the great bulk of the military, naval and all other expenses of this Government, and build up the commerce and manufactures of
England and
America, what would be the cost of raising an army large enough for their subjugation, and that by a section which produces none of those peculiar American staples which are the source of our national revenue and commercial wealth?
We are inclined to think that the
Tribune and its school, whilst felicitating themselves over the expense
South Carolina (a State which produces some indispensable articles of commence) is putting herself to, would better also calculate the cost of Coercion, or else better still, instead of making any such martial calculations, busy itself with measures for conciliating and preserving the country.