DAVIS. MASSACHUSETTS CURRENCY. 195 



Sir Isaac Newtou, who had been called to the charge of the mint for the 

 purpose of superintending the recoinage of the silver of the realm. Prior 

 to this process and during its continuance, the relations of the values of 

 English gold and silver coins were greatly disturbed. After the recoin- 

 age, confidence was re-established in London, but it was still fresh in 

 the minds of men that the upward career of the guinea, when measured 

 in the clipped and sweated silver in circulation prior to this measure, had 

 been decreed by parliamentary enactment to stop at 30s., and that by 

 successive laws its measure in silver had been ordered to be reduced to 

 22s., while as a matter of fact it had, at the time the table was made, 

 actually fallen to 21s. 6J. Thus it will be seen that the recent instability 

 of the English silver coinage may have influenced the politic course 

 taken in accepting the measure of value, established in terms of a foreign 

 coin, by the colonists themselves. The rate having been thus fixed 

 between a nominal measure of values and an actual coinage, there was 

 nothing to disturb it, and it was passed on to our day, six New England 

 shillings being equal to the dollar, Mexican or S{)auish, and to their 

 successor, our own dollar, 133s. New England money being in the days 

 of the Province equal to 100s. sterling. 



Until dollars came into use, all transactions in Massachusetts were stated 

 in New England money. All accounts given in terms of " lawful money " 

 must therefore be reduced twenty-five per cent if we would obtain the 

 corresponding amount in sterling. During the progress of the currency 

 inflation which took place in this conntry in the first half of the eigh- 

 teenth century, the Province of the Massachusetts Bay was the leader. 

 The other New England Colonies copied the form of note first issued in 

 this Province, which was in effect a mere certificate that the bill was due 

 from the Province to the possessor and should be in value equal to money, 

 and on these terms would be accepted by the Treasurer in all public pay- 

 ments. The bills of the different governments circulated side by side 

 promiscuously, even after legislation was invoked to prevent it, no matter 

 what the terms on which they were issued or the amounts outstanding of 

 the bills of the several governments, and when they all of them became 

 so seriously depreciated that they were worth only about twenty-five 

 per cent of the value at which they originally circulated, Massachusetts 

 adopted a new form of bill in which the value of the bill was expressed 

 in coined silver or gold. The other Colonies also adopted the new form, 

 and bills of the respective forms were thereafter known as old and new 

 tenor bills. Of the new tenor bills Massachusetts used three different 

 forms, but they all preserved the feature of stating a value in silver at 



