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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
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