sustaining a
war that demanded annual millions, and growing daily in wealth and
power,--nor the economical phenomena which followed the reopening of
Continental commerce in 1814,--nor the still more startling phenomena
which a few years later attended England's return to specie-payments and
a specie-currency,--nor statesmen setting themselves gravely down with
the map before them to the final settlement of Europe, and, while the
ink was yet fresh on their protocols, seeing all the results of their
combined wisdom set at nought by the inexorable development of the
fundamental principle which they had refused to recognize.

But we have seen these things, and, having seen them, unconsciously
apply the knowledge derived from them in our judgment of events to which
we have no right to apply it. We condemn errors which we should never
have detected without the aid of a light which was hidden from our
fathers, and will still be dwelling upon shortcomings which nothing
could have avoided but a general diffusion of that wisdom which
Providence never vouchsafes except as a gift to a few exalted minds.
Every school-boy has his text-book of political economy now: but many
can remember when these books first made their appearance in schools;
and so late as 1820 the Professor of History in English Cambridge
publicly lamented that there was no work upon this vital subject which
he could put into the hands of his classes.

When, therefore, our fathers found themselves face to face with the
complex questions of finance, they naturally fell back upon the
experience and devices of their past history: they did as in such
emergencies men always do,--they tried to meet the present difficulty
without weighing maturely the future difficulties. The present was at
the door, palpable, stern, urgent, relentless; and as they looked at it,
they could see nothing beyond half so full of perplexity and danger.
They hoped, as in the face of all history and all experience men will
ever hope, that out of those depths which their feeble eyes were unable
to penetrate something would yet arise in their hour of need to avert
the peril and snatch them from the precipice. Their past history had its
lessons of encouragement, some thought, and, some thought, of warning.
They seized the example, but the admonition passed by unheeded.

Short as the chronological record of American history then was, that
exchange of the products of labor which so speedily grows u