Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: Uncle Sham

From Lincoln Speech:

These figures show that our country may be as populous as Europe now is at some point between 1920 and 1930—say about 1925—our territory, at 73 1/3 persons to the square mile, being of capacity to contain 217,186,000.

And we will reach this, too, if we do not ourselves relinquish the chance by the folly and evils of disunion or by long and exhausting war springing from the only great element of national discord among us. While it can not be foreseen exactly how much one huge example of secession, breeding lesser ones indefinitely, would retard population, civilization, and prosperity, no one can doubt that the extent of it would be very great and injurious.

The proposed emancipation would shorten the war, perpetuate peace, insure this increase of population, and proportionately the wealth of the country. With these we should pay all the emancipation would cost, together with our other debt, easier than we should pay our other debt without it. If we had allowed our old national debt to run at 6 per cent per annum, simple interest, from the end of our revolutionary struggle until to-day, without paying anything on either principal or interest, each man of us would owe less upon that debt now than each man owed upon it then; and this because our increase of men through the whole period has been greater than 6 per cent—has run faster than the interest upon the debt. Thus time alone relieves a debtor nation, so long as its population increases faster than unpaid interest accumulates on its debt.

This fact would be no excuse for delaying payment of what is justly due, but it shows the great importance of time in this connection—the great advantage of a policy by which we shall not have to pay until we number 100,000,000 what by a different policy we would have to pay now, when we number but 31,000,000. In a word, it shows that a dollar will be much harder to pay for the war than will be a dollar for emancipation on the proposed plan. And then the latter will cost no blood, no precious life. It will be a saving of both.

Read more: State of the Union Address: Abraham Lincoln (December 1, 1862) — Infoplease.com http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:GFCr3OByqW4J:www.infoplease.com/t/hist/state-of-the-union/74.html+lincoln+speech+debt+children&cd=16&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a&source=www.google.com#ixzz1ShacQz8H


7 posted on 07/20/2011 7:31:47 PM PDT by Raycpa
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]


To: Raycpa

Somebody should have told mister Lincoln that Europe was even then far too big for a Strong centralized Government to rule them all.

People need freedom, and as a byproduct of that freedom you must have diversity and thus divergence as numbers and distances grow. This is a Natural and essential product of life, and evolution diversification. Without this product there can be nether short term freedom nor long term survival.

Just the same Unions(including governments) are formed among men to serve them in the protection of their rights, NOT to enslave them to provide for the mere existences nor in-equable demands of the same union(Government).

If any Union(goverment) cannot prove itself more beneficial then it is costly, it should by all rights be done away with. It is after all but a tool of life, not the objective of life.


15 posted on 07/20/2011 10:17:07 PM PDT by Monorprise
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson