116 REMARKS ON THE GOVERNMENT TAX. 
reel and totter under the shock ; and the government, with 
diminished revenues, and a puWic debt of $3,000,000,000, 
likely to be increased by the allov?ance of unsettled claims, 
and the reckless legislation of Congress, must let its credit 
sink ; under which dreadful shock not only all the great 
interests of the country, but the government itself, will 
likely be involved in one common ruin. 
It is objected by the South that the law in question is 
partial; that the agricultural productions of the North are 
not subjected to any such tax ; that the North, which is 
rich— and, by the immense spoils taken from the South 
during the war, made still richer — is not taxed upon its 
agricultural productions; while the South, plundered of 
thousands of millions of its property— its plantations, cities, 
and towns laid waste by fire and sword — is so poor that 
it is a struggle for the people to hve ; and yet Congress, 
disregarding their crushed and ruined condition, has deter- 
mined to discriminate against them, and tax them more 
than the entire net proceeds of their labor. Crushed as 
the Southern people are, they have not lost their manhood 
and self-respect. All experience proves that it is danger- 
ous to trample too long on a proud and brave people. 
Sad, indeed, is the lesson on this point taught us by the 
late civil war. The white population of the South, including 
Maryland, Western Virginia, East Tennessee, Kentucky, 
and Missouri, at the commencement of the war, was about 
8,000,000. If we subtract from this the number of loyal- 
ists (so called) in those States, with the scattering men of 
that caste in other parts of the South, I think it not far 
from the truth to say we had 5,000,000 of white per- 
sons true to the Confederacy ; add these loyalists to the 
North, and it would swell the Federal population against 
us to at least 26,000,000, or five to one. In addition to 
