No system of taxation could be so oppressive and so vicious as to have prevented the development and growth of the United States. A country like ours--in itsresources so abundant. in its soil so fertile. in its minerals so exhaustless. in its waterpower so powerful. lying midway befween the two oceans. so as to face Europe on the one shore and the Orient on the other. inhabited by a people the very most enterprising. energetic. and aggressive that the world has ever seen. possessing in the highest degree the faculty of orderand the capacity to build Statescould not but prosper in spite of any system of taxation which the wit of man perverted to the aggrandizement of personal ends might devise. When the mere erection of a cabin and the building of a fence and the plowing of the surface of the virgin soil change the value of land froma dollar and a quarter an acre to ten and fifteen dollars an acre. when the deficit of breadstuffs. which would have brought the world to the verge of starvation. could be supplied only by the surplus which these virgin farms. with scarcely any culture joyously rendered. when the clothing which the world needed had in large part to be weaved from the cotton which grew hoaron these fields. when the immigrants from narrow and taxridden homes abroad found new and ample homes and constant and profitable labor in these new and outstretching prairies. there was no possibility that any system of taxation could be so oppressive and mischievous as to prevent the marvelous growth and development of such a country. It could only retard that growth and create conditions which would bring unhappiness and distress. It could not prevent theaccumulatiou of wealth. it could only distribute it unequally and oppressively.
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immigrants