No. 85.] 49 



year 1844, was $4,243,100. This will soon be $8,000,000, unless 

 we cease to manufacture paupers, criminals, and needless litigation. 



In the common business transactions of society, men submit to be 

 plundered an hundred times, from a seeming necessity. This neces- 

 sity will always occur, so long as we refuse to be content with a sum 

 equal to the products of one pair of hands. We violate a law of our 

 being, when we strive to obtain a sum equal to the earnings of two 

 intellects, and of four hands. It is obvious that should one-half the 

 community succeed in acquiring a sum equal to the products of three 

 hands to one human being, the other moiety must of necessity limit 

 all their food, clothing, houses, farms and other property, to an average 

 product of one hand to each person. Such is the present lamentable 

 result of our past unwise legislation. If the alarming evils of this 

 system be not corrected, is there not reason to fear that it will, at no 

 remote period, call down the terrible but just punishment of Heaven 1 



Before we prescribe a remedy, let us view the malady in another 

 aspect : 



" To know ourselves diseased, is half our cure." Our intense anx- 

 iety to acquire property without producing it, is an eating cancer on 

 the body politic ; and he is no patriot, who is unwilling to have the 

 sore probed to the bottom. 



There are in this State, at least ten thousand persons, that enjoy in- 

 comes, on an average, of $2,000 each, derived from interest on money, 

 rents, and for personal services. This secures to them an aggregate 

 annual income of $20,000,000. Estimating the average value of ru- 

 ral labor at $200 per head, and it will be seen that these 10,000 rich 

 men, draw from human muscle and thought, a sum equal to the entire 

 products of 100,000 farmers. 



Of this large sum, they may consume as much as 50,000 laboring 

 men produce, and then lay up annually $10,000,000. Let us sup- 

 pose this money is re-loaned, at an annual interest which will double 

 the principal in twelve years. In that length of time the income of 

 one year will become $20,000,000, and in twenty-four years it will 

 become $40,000,000. 



In connection with the above figures, it is important to bear in mind 

 that while interest augments the principal four fold in a quarter of a 

 century, the increase of laboring people to work and pay this interest, 

 is only 100 per cent, in the same length of time. Now, is it not clear- 

 ly demonstrated that, by increasing our tax on productive industry 

 [Senate, No. 85.] D 



