202 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



silver, and it is quite probable that the £50,000 emitted for the Hill and 

 Walker expedition agaiust Quebec in 1711 had not then fully done its 

 work. Still another exception to the rule is to be found in 1749. There 

 were outstanding that year, in the month of May, about £2,200,000 old 

 tenor. A tax of £75,000 new tenor was laid that summer. This was 

 equal to £300,000 old tenor, and reduced the amount outstanding to 

 £1,900,000. Silver was then quoted at 60s. an ounce, and the outstand- 

 ing circulation, thus reduced, was equivalent to 633,333 ounces, which at 

 6s. 8rf. an ounce was equal to £211,111. It must not be forgotten, how- 

 ever, that when that tax was laid it was known that the government of 

 Great Britain had completed its preparations for reimbursing the Province 

 for its expenditures in behalf of the Cape Breton expedition, and a law 

 had been passed in the Province fixing the terms of the redemption of 

 the bills. One cause of the delay in paying over the money to the Prov- 

 ince was the opposition of certain merchants in London, who believed 

 that speculators were gathering in the bills in the hope of reaping a 

 profit out of their redemption. These exceptions, therefore, do not fur- 

 nish adequate reasons for doubting the correctness of the rule deduced 

 by Douglass. 



The influence of large emissions on the part of the Province of the 

 Massachusetts Bay upon the silver quotations can be easily distinguished, 

 and in some instances, where the rise of silver was stimulated by causes 

 not connected with the issues of this Province, the coincidence whh large 

 emissions in Rhode Island furnishes an adequate explanation of this 

 change in rate. Douglass was of opinion that two thirds of the bills 

 emitted by Rhode Island were absorbed in the circulation of Massachu- 

 setts. The table on the opposite page, mainly made up from facts brought 

 together by Douglass in his pamphlets, will illustrate these points. 



Wages did not rise proportionately with silver. In a pamphlet pub- 

 lished in 1721, when silver was between 12 and 13s. an ounce, the writer 

 says,* " I will next ask the poor laborer that works for five shillings per 

 day, half money, half goods, whether he lives better now than when he 

 received four shillings per day in good silver money at the rate of 

 seventeen penny-weights for six sliillings." Douglass, writing in 1739 

 concerning the eff"ect of the depreciation on wages, says : f " How much 

 they have suffered and continue to sufi^er is obvious. For instance, a 

 carpenter, when silver was at 8s. per oz., his wages were 5s. a day all 



* Tlie Second I'art of South Sea Stock, p. 16. 

 I A Discourse, etc., pp. 2.3, 24. 



