Nobody doubts the brilliancy of the movement to pay off the national debt,--calling to mind the charge of the six hundred at Balaclava riding into the jaws of Death, so that the beholder exclaimed, in memorable words, “It is magnificent, but it is not war.”[203] In other words, it was a feat of hardihood and immolation, abnormal, eccentric, and beyond even the terrible requirements of battle. In similar spirit might a beholder, witnessing the present sacrifice of our people in the redemption of a debt so large a part of which justly belongs to posterity, exclaim, “It is magnificent, but it is not business.” Unquestionably business requires that we should meet existing obligations according to their letter and spirit; but it does not require payment in advance, nor payment of obligations resting upon others. To do this is magnificent, but beyond the line of business. President Lincoln, in one of his earliest propositions of Emancipation, before he had determined upon the great Proclamation, contemplated compensation to slave-masters, and, in order to commend this large expenditure, went into an elaborate calculation to show how easy it would be, if proportioned upon the giant shoulders of posterity. Dismissing the idea of payment by the existing generation, he proceeded to exhibit the growing capacity of the country,--how from the beginning there had been a decennial increase in population of 34.60 per cent.,--how during a period of seventy years the ratio had never been two per cent. below or two per cent. above this average, thus attesting the inflexibility of this law of increase. Assuming its continuance, he proceeded to show that in 1870 our population would be 42,323,341,--in 1880 it would be 56,967,216,--in 1890 it would be 76,677,872,--and in 1900 it would be 103,208,415,--while in 1930 it would amount to 251,680,914.[204] Nobody has impeached these estimates. There they stand in that Presidential Message as colossal mile-stones of the Republic. The increase in material resources is beyond that of population. The most recent calculation, founded on the last census, shows that for the previous decade it was at the rate of eighty per cent.,[205] although other calculations have placed it as high as one hundred and twenty-six per cent.[206] Whether the one or the other, the rate of increase is enormous, and, unless arrested in some way not now foreseen, it must carry our national resources to a fabulous extent. What is a burden now will be scarcely a feather’s weight in the early decades of the next century, when a population counted by hundreds of millions will wield resources counted by thousands of millions. On this head details are superfluous. All must see at once the irresistible conclusion.