On the other hand, the burdens of a National Debt are very apparent: for example, the annual _interest_ charge to the Union at the close of our late civil war was $150,000,000, which gradually declined by the lowering of the interest-rate and by the paying off of principal to $61,368,912 for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1881; between March, 1869, and August, 1873, the United States paid $378,015,065 on the principal of its public debt; the collection of the Internal Revenue alone of the national government cost for the fiscal year 1867, $7,712,089; and in each of the two years, 1870 and 1881, a little over $101,500,000 was paid out to reduce the principal of the Debt. All those vast sums came out of the industry and income of individuals; and taxation to any degree as all this implies is a mighty disturbance to industry, and gives rise to an army of officials who eat out a considerable percentage of all they collect. Moreover, the various expedients of taxation, which are always practically unequal in their operation, are apt to give rise to irritation and political agitation, and even sometimes to threats of repudiation, especially when the occasion has gone by under which the debt was contracted, and another generation is called upon to pay off a debt it had no agency in creating. Here the vexed question arises, how far has one generation _the right_ to throw upon succeeding ones the burdens of a National Debt? The true answer to this question is, _it has a very limited right indeed_. The opposite doctrine implies tacitly when not openly, that the succeeding generations will have no occasion for extraordinary expenses of their own, and, therefore, may rightfully be made to contribute to the extraordinary expenditures of this generation. But it is pure assumption to take for granted, that the next generations will not have, of some kind or other, as much occasion for an extraordinary effort in the way of defence or of improvement as the present generation has had. It is a common but harmful illusion to estimate what has now to be done as of much more importance than what will have to be done. Therefore, to throw the present burden forward on another generation of men, who are likely to have to make their own special exertion, just as great and just as imperatively called for, is a procedure unwarranted by past experience. The view that has long prevailed in practice, that a great War-debt, for example, might be easily and justly cast upon posterity, has again and again given rise to needless and expensive wars; _those_ have been called upon to pay the piper, who perceived the utter inutility of the expenditure; and thus bitterness has been added to burden.