The case is aggravated, when we consider the boundless resources of the country, through which in a short time even this great debt will be lightened, if the praters of Repudiation are silenced. Peace, financially as well as politically, is needed. Let us have peace. Nowhere will it be felt more than at the South, which is awakening to a consciousness of resources unknown while Slavery ruled. With these considerable additions to the national capital, five years cannot pass without a sensible diminution of our burdens. A rate of taxation, _per capita_, equal to only one half that of 1866, will pay even our present interest, all present expenses, and the entire principal, in less than twenty years. But to this end we must keep faith. * * * * * The attempt is aggravated still further, when it is considered that Repudiation is impossible. Try as you may, you cannot succeed. You may cause incalculable distress, and postpone the great day of peace, but you cannot do this thing. The national debt never can be repudiated. It will be paid, dollar for dollar, in coin, with interest to the end. How little do these Repudiators know the mighty resisting power which they encounter! how little, the mighty crash which they invite! As well undertake to move Mount Washington from its everlasting base, or to shut out the ever-present ocean from our coasts. It is needless to say that the crash would be in proportion to the mass affected, being nothing less than the whole business of the country. Now it appears from investigations making at this moment by Commissioner Wells, whose labors shed such light on financial questions, that _our annual product reaches the sum of seven thousand millions of dollars_.[101] But this prodigious amount depends for its value upon exchange, which in turn depends upon credit. Destroy exchange, and even these untold resources would be an infinite chaos, without form and void. Employment would cease, capital would waste, mills would stop, the rich would become poor,--the poor, I fear, would starve. Savings banks, trust companies, insurance companies would disappear. Such would be the mighty crash; but here you see also the mighty resisting power. Therefore, again do I say, Repudiation is impossible.