62 STATE DEBTS. [CHAP. XXIV. 



the expenses of Government were in reality defrayed 

 during several years by borrowed money, and the 

 burthen of the debt thrown on posterity. The 

 facility with which your English capitalists, in 

 1821, lent their cash to a State from which the In 

 dians were not yet expelled, without reflecting on 

 the migratory nature of the white population, is as 

 tonishing ! The planters who got grants of your 

 money, and spent it, have nearly all of them moved 

 off and settled beyond the Mississippi. 



&quot;First, our Legislature negotiates a loan ; then bor 

 rows to pay the interest of it ; then discovers, after 

 some years, that five out of the sixteen millions lent 

 to us have evaporated. Our democrats then stig 

 matise those who vote for direct taxes to redeem 

 their pledges as the high taxation men. Possibly 

 the capital and interest may eventually be made 

 good, but there is some risk at least of a suspension 

 of payment. At this moment the State is selling 

 land forfeited by those to whom portions of the bor 

 rowed money were lent on mortgage, but the value 

 of property thus forced into the market, is greatly 

 depreciated.&quot; 



Although, since my departure in 1846, Alabama 

 has not repudiated, I was struck with the warn 

 ing here conveyed against lending money to a new 

 and half-formed community, where everything is 

 fluctuating and on the move a State from which 

 the Indians are only just retreating, and where few 

 whites ever continue to reside three years in one 

 place, where thousands are going with their negroes 

 to Louisiana, Texas, or Arkansas, where even the 



