7. Slavery agitation took its rise during this time (1819-'20), in the form of attempted restriction on the State of Missouri--a prohibition to hold slaves, to be placed upon her as a condition of her admission into the Union, and to be binding upon her afterwards. This agitation came from the North, and under a federal lead, and soon swept both parties into its vortex. It was quieted, so far as that form of the question was concerned, by admitting the State without restriction, and imposing it on the remainder of the Louisiana territory north and west of that State, and above the parallel of 36 degrees, 30 minutes; which is the prolongation of the southern boundary line of Virginia and Kentucky. This was called a "compromise," and was all clear gain to the antislavery side of the question, and was done under the lead of the united slave state vote in the Senate, the majority of that vote in the House of Representatives, and the undivided sanction of a Southern administration. It was a Southern measure, and divided free and slave soil far more favorably to the North than the ordinance of 1787. That divided about equally: this of 1820 gave about all to the North. It abolished slavery over an immense extent of territory where it might then legally exist, over nearly the whole of Louisiana, left it only in Florida and Arkansas territory, and opened no new territory to its existence. It was an immense concession to the non-slaveholding States; but the genius of slavery agitation was not laid. It reappeared, and under different forms, first from the North, in the shape of petitions to Congress to influence legislation on the subject; then from the South, as a means of exciting one half the Union against the other, and laying the foundation for a Southern confederacy. With this new question, in all its forms, the men of the new generation have had to grapple for the whole period of the "Thirty Years." 8. The war had created a debt, which, added to a balance of that of the Revolution, the purchase of Louisiana, and some other items, still amounted to ninety-two millions of dollars at the period of the commencement of this "View;" and the problem was to be solved, whether a national debt could be paid and extinguished in a season of peace, leaving a nation wholly free from that encumbrance; or whether it was to go on increasing, a burthen in itself, and absorbing with its interest and changes an annual portion of the public revenues. That problem was solved, contrary to the experience of the world, and the debt paid; and the practical benefit added to the moral, of a corresponding reduction in the public taxes.