I sold that tierce for a great deal of profit; yet the whole of what I sold it for would afterwards buy but a barrel. I have now more money than ever I had; yet I am not so rich as when I had less. This is what I have experienced myself; and I believe every man in town and country feels the same. I am sure we shall all grow poorer and poorer, unless we all fall on some method to lower our prices; and then the money we have to spare will be worth something. I am glad to see the affair begun upon. May God give it success; and let all the people say AMEN."

Among the expedients resorted to at the time, for the purpose of maintaining the value of paper money, were associations organized for the purpose of driving hard money out of circulation, in the hope that, by confining all the operations of society to paper money, its decline, at least, could be prevented. The following copy of a handbill placarded at the time in Boston will give a good idea of the mode by which such a result was sought to be accomplished:

"SONS OF BOSTON!

SLEEP NO LONGER!

Wednesday, June 16, 1779.

"You are requested to meet on the floor of the Old South Meeting-House to-morrow morning, at 9 o'clock, at which time the bells will ring.

"Rouse and catch the Philadelphia spirit; rid the community of those monopolizers and extortioners, who, like canker-worms, are gnawing upon your vitals. They are reducing the currency to waste paper, by refusing to take it for many articles. The infection is dangerous. We have borne with such wretches; but will bear no longer. Public examples at this time would be public benefits. You, then, that have articles to sell, lower your prices; you that have houses to let, refuse not the currency for rent; for, inspired with the spirit of those heroes and patriots who have struggled and bled for their country, and moved with the cries and distresses of the widow, the orphan, and the necessitous, Boston shall no longer be your place of security. Ye inhabitants of Nantucket, who first introduced the accursed crime of refusing paper money, quit the place, or destruction shall attend your property, and your persons be the object of

"VENGEANCE.

"N. B. Lawyers, keep yourselves to yourselves.

"It is our determination to support the reputable merchant and fair trader"

Congress, still having little other resource than its notes, continued their issue on a larger scale than ever, to meet their more rapid and excessive decline. On the 26th of August, the amount issued equalled $161,500,000. Of this sum, $100,000,000 had been issued during the year. The value was then reduced to eighteen for one. Congress still attempted to arrest a further decline, by an address in which it promised, "if possible," not to exceed the amount already outstanding; and to inspire confidence by the method so often resorted to in similar cases, of depreciating the magnitude of present burdens by showing the vastly increased number of shoulders upon which they must soon rest; for, peace established, crowds of emigrants would flee from oppressed Europe to this land of liberty. A country so rich by nature, and soon to be so populous, could easily bear all the burdens likely to be imposed upon her by the war:

"Let us suppose," it said, " for the sake of argument, that at the conclusion of the war the emissions should amount to $200,000,000; that, exclusive of supplies from taxes, which will not be inconsiderable, the loans should amount to $100,000,000, then the whole national debt of the United States would be $300,000,000. There are at present 3,000,000 of inhabitants in the thirteen States; $300,000,000, divided among 3,000,000 of people, would give to each person $100; and is there an individual in America unable, in the course of eighteen or twenty years, to pay it again? Suppose the whole debt assessed, as it ought to be, on the inhabitants in proportion to their respective estates, what would then be the share of the poorer people? Perhaps not $10. Besides, as this debt will not be payable immediately, but probably twenty years allotted for it, the number of inhabitants by that time in America will be far more than double their present amount. It is well known that the inhabitants of this country increased almost in the ratio of compound interest. By natural population they doubled almost every twenty years, and how great may be the host of emigrants from other countries cannot be ascertained. We have the highest reason to believe the number will be immense. Suppose that only ten thousand should arrive the first year after the war, what will those ten thousand, with their families, count in twenty years time? Probably double the number. This observation applies with proportionable force to the emigrants of every successive year. Thus you see a great part of your debt will be payable, not merely by the present number of inhabitants, but by that number swelled and increased by the natural population of the present inhabitants, by multitudes of emigrants daily arriving from other countries, and by the natural population of those succes

sive emigrants; so that every person's share of the debt will be constantly diminishing by others coming in to pay a proportion of it." 1

The injustice of being compelled to accept the government notes in the payment of debts previously contracted had now become so great as to be no longer tolerated. Even Washington would no longer receive them in the payment of old debts, but at their value. In a letter to the manager of his estate, Lund Washington, written under date of the 17th of August, 1779, he said:

"Some time ago you applied to me to know if you should receive payment of General M's bonds, and of the bond due from the deceased Mr. M's estate to me; and you were, after animadverting a little upon the subject, authorized to do so. Of course, I presume the money has been received. I have since considered the matter in every point of view in which my judgment enables me to place it; and am resolved to receive no more old debts (such, I mean, as were contracted and ought to have been paid before the war) at the present nominal value of the money, unless compelled to do it, or it is the practice of others to do it. Neither justice,

1 The amount of the public debt incurred in the prosecution of the war, in addition to that incurred by the several States, was given in the address from which the preceding extract was made, as follows:

At that time the whole amount received from taxation, through requisitions upon the States, amounted only to $3,027,560. The whole amount supplied by the people up to the date of the address, other than that furnished on the notes, equalled $29,216,469. The domestic debt was chiefly in the form of certificates, or acknowledgments of the government of supplies furnished it, which were given largely by commissaries in payment of articles seized by them, and represented the estimated value of such as were taken.

The following statement of expenditures of the government for 1778, and the proportions of paper and metallic money used, will show the extremities to which it was reduced:

Notes
Specie

Livres

$62,156,842

78,666

28,525

The amount of specie amidst such a vast mass of paper was very like the wit of Gratiano in the play.

reason, nor policy requires it. The law
designed. It was intended to stamp a
free circulation to, the paper bills of cre
could have been intended to make a man t
in the pound for a just debt which his deb
and thereby involve himself in ruin. I am
was to take paper money for every kind of
depreciated value for those debts which hav
the money became so; but I will not in fut
sum for such old debts as come under the a
as before specified. No man has gone, and
to serve the republic than myself. If sacri
would effect any valuable purpose, I would no
in doing it; but my submitting in matters
same is done by others, is no more than a dre

And in a letter of the 22d August,
Congress, Mr. Reed, he says:-

"The sponge, which you say some gentle using, unless there can be a discrimination clauses provided (and how far this is pract would be unjust and impolitic in the extrem understand what they mean by using the spong the money in the hands of the holders of it, cannot in my opinion stand justified upon any mon policy, common sense, or common hones man, for instance, who had possessed himself o lars by means of one or the value of one in spec upon the public for more than one of the latter in that ratio according to the periods of depreciati who are better acquainted with the nature of the more leisure than I have, to discuss." 2

The solution of this matter had now come forecast of even Washington himself. He wou the notes; but, certainly, a person who had co $10 in coin, had no right to discharge the debt cost him only $1 in coin; nor had the holder o which cost him only $1, a right to be paid its fi solution was, in fact, possible; for matters had no a pass that the proper one was to let the m hands of its holders. Less suffering and less in result from this mode of disposing of the prob other. Justice could never have been done by

1 Life and Writings of Washington, vol. vi. p. 8
2 Ibid. p. 332.

s of the war. It did m din 1775, before the note rosed to be available

me in which they would lea dedit of the governmentdise. The testimony of

balefal influence they me of the people, is as en in his "History of the W ww actively engaged, says of

m the scenes of active ey found their substa t for their support. T the bequests of a deceased all his well-meant tender And compelled her to m The blooming vi ble title to her patrim personal charins and ing from the hand ess, was obliged t the pound. I and diligen iffing sum ere legis

evil