Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/58

46 deal within the actual and direct cost. Some of this cost will appear as a public debt. Statements recently made respecting it can hardly be trusted, notwithstanding the authority on which they rest. Part of this war debt is funded already, part not yet funded. When the outstanding demands are all settled, and the treasury notes redeemed, there will probably be a war debt of not less than $125,000,000. At least, such is the estimate of an impartial and thoroughly competent judge. But, not to exaggerate, let us call it only $100,000,000.

It will, perhaps, be said. Part of this money, all that is paid in pensions, is a charity, and therefore no loss. But it is a charity paid to men who, except for the war, would have needed no such aid; and, therefore, a waste. Of the actual cost of the war, some three or four millions have been spent in extravagant prices for hiring or purchasing ships, in buying provisions and various things needed by the army, and supplied by political favourites at exorbitant rates. This is the only portion of the cost which is not a sheer-waste; here the money has only changed hands; nothing has been destroyed, except the honesty of the parties concerned in such transactions. If a farmer hires men to help him till the soil, the men earn their subsistence and their wages, and leave, besides, a profit to their employer; when the season is over, he has his crops and his improvements as the return for their pay and subsistence. But for all that the soldier has consumed, for his wages, his clothes, his food and drink, the fighting tools he has worn out, and the ammunition he has expended, there is no available return to show; all that is a clear waste. The beef is eaten up, the cloth worn away, the powder is burnt, and what is there to show for it all? Nothing but the "glory." You sent out sound men, and they come back, many of them, sick and maimed; some of them are slain.

The indirect pecuniary cost of the war is caused, first, by diverting some 150,000 men, engaged in the war directly or remotely, from the works of productive industry, to the labours of war, which produce nothing; and, secondly, by disturbing the regular business of the country, first by the withdrawal of men from their natural work; then, by withdrawing large quantities of money from the active capital