and feels in its progress to power all the pressure which malice can inspire, is likely to endure. It moves on to higher rank and mightier conflicts with a vigor which no easy life could insure.

TRIALS FROM POVERTY.

War is enormously expensive; and one of the first problems of belligerent powers is how to subsist an army. Six hours cannot pass before demands will be made upon the commissariat which would startle an inexperienced man.

When the American people took up arms in defence of their liberties, they had no treasury, no funds. Before there could be any thing for the military chest, some plan of finance must be devised that would actually create funds. The colonies first in the struggle immediately began the ruinous but apparently inevitable policy of issuing bills of credit. They could be used at first with some success; but they were not money. They were promises to pay; and, in proportion as their redemption in specie became difficult or impossible, they depreciated, and finally became valueless. Congress reluctantly adopted this dangerous policy, which, while it would postpone for a while the demand for hard money, could not prevent its return with greatly increased urgency. The only dependence of the forming nation was upon the colonies; and their embarrassments on their own account seriously interfered with the financial credit based upon their local resources. In June, 1775, Congress, at the suggestion of New York, issued two millions of continental bills of credit for the immediate relief of the army: but this was very soon exhausted; and as it was exchanged for necessary supplies, like the colonial bills, it soon began to be regarded as something less than money. The Canadians could not be induced to take continental money; and our army in the North was subsisted with the greatest difficulty. For the rest, the only expedient was to issue more paper-bills; and in a year and a half they had risen to twenty millions.

The credit of this money had been quite well kept up by the patriotism of the people and the reputation of our distinguished men; but it had at length become so abundant, that no existing power could prevent its depreciation. An attempt to loan five millions at four per cent; the experiment of a lottery; the authority of Congress given to Washington to punish all who refused to receive the nation's money, and thus disparage continental credit; and the attempt of a New-England convention to establish by law the prices of necessary commodities, all showed the public distress, while they afforded very inadequate relief. It was quite in vain for Congress to resolve that their bills "ought to pass current in all payments, trade, and dealings, and be deemed equal in value to the same nominal sums in Spanish dollars;" that those who refused them were "enemies of the United States;" and to menace offenders with "forfeitures and other penalties." The traders could invent methods of evading all such regulations. If a piece of paper was not a dollar, and no man would give a dollar for it, no law could make it buy a dollar's worth of provisions.

In the mean time, the army was often driven to the greatest extremes of suffering. The demands of nature justified unlawful seizures of food; the people were indulgent; and various providential resources preserved our poor soldiers from actual starvation.

In March, 1778, after having issued ten millions, then two millions, then a million, and then another million, of continental bills of credit, the depreciation became so alarming, that renewed efforts to obtain a loan became indispensable. The public money sank to three or four to one. In these times of distress, men were found who were "endeavoring by every means of oppression, sharping, and extortions, to procure enormous gains;" and commissaries were authorized to seize and receipt for necessary provisions "purchased up or engrossed by any person with a view of selling the same." We blush for our race at these revela

tions of intense meanness; and, as we meet these creatures in human form in the history of other times and our own, we feel that the halter of Cromwell ought to be the protection of right.

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Washington burned with indignation at these outrages in Pennsylvania. To Reed he wrote, " It gives me very sincere pleasure to find that the Assembly is so well disposed to second your endeavors in bringing those murderers of our causethe monopolizers, forestallers, and engrossers to condign punishment. It is much to be lamented that each State, long ere this, has not hunted them down as pests to society, and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America. I would to God that some one of the more atrocious in each State were hung in gibbets upon a gallows five times as high as that prepared for Haman! No punishment, in my opinion, is too severe for the man who can build his greatness upon his country's ruin."

"Laws unworthy the character of infant republics," said Congress, "are become necessary to supply the defects of public virtue, and to correct the vices of some of her sons." For, after government had purchased clothing of some of these sharpers in Boston "at the most extravagant rate of from ten to eighteen hundred per cent," they demanded pay before they would deliver the goods; "thereby adding to extortion the crime of wounding the public credit," "manifesting a disposition callous to the feelings of humanity, and untouched by the severe sufferings of their countrymen, exposed to a winter's campaign in defence of the common liberties of their country." The accusations in this particular instance were denied, and probably the goods were really of more value than any amount of continental money; but the bitter complaints of Congress show the extreme of suffering in the army and the nation for the want of means to clothe and feed the men who were exposing life and enduring incredible hardships to preserve the life of liberty.

Sixty-seven millions of dollars in continental paper-money

were expended during the year 1778, raising the aggregate amount outstanding to $113,456,269; and the depreciation was six and eight dollars to one.

In May, 1780, a committee from Congress visited the camp and from their report we learn "that the army was five months unpaid; that it seldom had more than six days provisions in advance, and was, on several occasions, for sundry successive days, without meat; that the army was destitute of forage; that the medical department had neither sugar, tea, chocolate, wine, nor spirits; and that every department was without money, or even the shadow of credit."

We need not pursue this subject further. We all understand that the currency of the nation, raised at length to $369,547,027, was finally valueless; and we may see the severity of the trials through which, in consequence, the nation was compelled to pass; what shiverings from cold, and gnawings of hunger, tested the fortitude of our brave soldiers; what sufferings of their wives and little ones, as the means of their scanty subsistence became worthless on their hands; what demands upon economy checked all disposition to luxury among the great civilians and warriors, who stood together, a colossal tower of strength and wisdom, during those days of peril; what grand lessons of financial skill, and finally what trust in Providence, were taught this nation by the extreme poverty of her people, her States, and her General Government.

TRIALS FROM DISLOYALTY AND TREASON.

Some men there were whose mental processes could not keep up with the progress of events. They were Englishmen by birth and in spirit, and Royalists from principle and habit. They were "Tories" of course, honest let us trust, and yet none the less enemies to the American nation in its struggles for independence. Others were stupid, and had no

power to understand the nature of the contest; craven cowards, with no intellectual ability to discover the superior safety of the right, and that the right was with the American Republic. They were "Tories" because they thought the king was sure to triumph in the conflict with a few feeble colonists, without an army, without a navy, without veteran officers, or money to procure the materials of war. They were excessively impudent, and brutally cruel.

Here was a source of the greatest trial and danger. In New York, in New Jersey, throughout the South, and all along the Northern frontier, they were spies, mingling with our forces; detecting and revealing to our enemies the plans of every campaign; harboring and feeding the British, and withholding, whenever it was possible, the means of subsistence from their brethren in the American army; conducting the secret or public expeditions of the enemy through routes otherwise unknown, and impracticable to them; and not unfrequently, with their own hands, applying the torch to the houses of their suffering neighbors. They became the instinctive allies of the merciless savages, and joined in their shouts of triumph, reeking in the blood of their own brethren. These internal foes must be met and conquered, must be tracked to their hiding-places, and overwhelmed with disaster and disgrace, at the same time that the veterans of Clinton and Howe, Burgoyne and Cornwallis, must be met and conquered in the field. How sensibly, then, did Hawley write to Gerry, "Can we subsist, did any State ever subsist, without exterminating traitors? It is amazingly wonderful, that, having no capital punishment for our intestine enemies, we have not been utterly ruined before now."

When the loyal people of New York were rejoicing over the Declaration of Independence, "a large number of the wealthier citizens looked on with distrust; and the Episcopal clergy showed their dissatisfaction by shutting up the churches." *

* Hildreth, iii. 141.