“The domestic debt may perhaps be nine or ten millions, and the foreign debt two or three. For payment of the foreign debt it is proposed to lay a tax of five per cent. upon all imports until discharged, which, I am informed, has already been agreed to by most of the States, and probably will soon be confirmed by the rest. Upon the whole, it appears that this plan is as prudently conceived and as judiciously arranged, as to the end proposed, as any experienced cabinet of European ministers could have devised or planned any similar project. “The second point which appears to me to be deserving of attention, respecting the immense cession of territory to the United States at the late peace, is a point _which will perhaps in a few years become an unparalleled phenomenon in the political world_. As soon as the national debt of the United States shall be discharged by the sale of one portion of those lands, we shall then see the Confederate Republic in a new character, as a proprietor of lands either for sale or to let upon rents. While other nations may be struggling under debts too enormous to be discharged either by economy or taxation, and while they may be laboring to raise ordinary and necessary supplies by burdensome impositions upon their own persons and properties, _here will be a nation possessed of a new and unheard-of financial organ of stupendous magnitude, and in process of time of unmeasured value, thrown into their lap as a fortuitous superfluity, and almost without being sought for_. “When such an organ of revenue begins to arise into produce and exertion, what public uses it may be applicable to, or to what abuses and perversions it might be rendered subservient, is far beyond the reach of probable discussion now. Such discussions would only be visionary speculations. However, thus far it is obvious, and highly deserving of our attention, that it cannot fail becoming to the American States a most important instrument of national power, the progress and operation of which must hereafter be _a most interesting object of attention to the British American dominions which are in close vicinity to the territories of the United States; and I should hope that these considerations would lead us, inasmuch as we value those parts of our dominions, to encourage conciliatory and amicable correspondence between them and their neighbors_.”