hole debt of the nation, and
more than twice the value of all the slaves in the Union. While, then,
the $20,000,000 proposed to be appropriated to aid Missouri in
emancipating her slaves, is erroneously denounced as increasing federal
taxation, the effect is directly the reverse. The disappearance of
slavery from Missouri would ensure the overthrow of the rebellion, and
the perpetuity of the Union, and bring the war much sooner to a close,
thus saving a monthly expenditure, far exceeding the whole
appropriation. But this vast increase of the wealth of Missouri, caused
by her becoming a free State, if far less than one billion of dollars,
would, by increasing her contribution to the national revenue, in
augmented payments of duties and internal taxes, diminish to that extent
the rate of taxation to be paid by every State, Missouri included.

The total wealth of the Union in 1860 exceeded $16,000,000,000. If this
were increased $1,000,000,000 in time, by the augmented wealth of
Missouri, and our revenue from duties and taxes should be $220,000,000,
as estimated by the Secretary of the Treasury, the increased income,
being one-seventeenth of the whole, would exceed $12,000,000 per annum;
or, if the increase of wealth should be only $200,000,000, then the
augmented proportional annual revenue would be $2,750,000, or nearly
one-eightieth part of the whole revenue, thus soon extinguishing the
principal and interest of the debt of $20,000,000, and leaving a large
surplus to decrease the percentage of taxation in every State, Missouri
included. The bill then might be justly entitled, _an act to restore the
Union, to advance the public credit, to hasten the overthrow of the
rebellion, to augment the national wealth, and_ DECREASE THE RATE OF
TAXATION. By overthrowing the rebellion, the taxes to pay the national
debt will be collected from all the States, instead of being confined to
those that are loyal. The rebel confederate debt, never having had any
existence in law or justice, but having been created only to support a
wicked rebellion, will of course be expunged by the reestablishment of
the Union. Indeed, by a new mathematical and philosophical principle,
far transcending the most sublime discoveries of Newton, Leibnitz, or La
Place, the rebel debt is redeemable six months _after the end of
eternity_, namely, six months after it is an _independent nation_, they
shall have ratified a _treaty_ of peace with us! All the rebel S