Page:The Civil War in America - an address read at the last meeting of the Manchester Union and Emancipation Society.djvu/65

Rh some great financial errors; above all the error of passing the Legal Tender Act, the consequences of which they still feel in the derangement of prices, the disturbance of trade, and the prevalence of gambling speculation in gold. Nor was the willingness of the people to bear taxation at first fully appreciated by the government itself. But towards the close of the war the whole amount of the burden, which it must be remembered was really self-imposed, including all the imposts. Federal and State, must have been as heavy as was ever borne: and at the same time large sums, as well as very precious time and labour, were being freely contributed to patriotic objects connected with the war.

In this, as in other respects, the character of the nation improved as the war went on. So again, at the outset, the immense amount of sudden expenditure, and the vast number of contracts thrown at once upon the market, no doubt bred, as such things always will breed, a great deal of roguery and corruption. But in time, reasonable purity, as well as efficiency, was secured; so I was assured by informants unconnected with the administration, and who were not strong partisans of the war. That the Government itself was not actuated by the corrupt love of patronage, it has proved by its prompt reduction of the great establishments, on the magnitude of which its patronage depended.

There is a question more important still, especially to those who insist that the American community is based on Christianity. How did the humanity of the people bear the most terrible of all trials, the trial of civil war? To be able to answer this question fairly we must recall to our minds the records of other civil wars—those of the civil wars in France between the Burgundians and the