196 



PROCEEDINGS OP THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



which the bill should pass, though changes were made in the silver rate 

 and in the phrase which defined their use in payments. The new tenor 

 bills were at first held at the rate of one for three, but very shortly there- 

 after the fact that the depreciation of the old tenor bills was not fully 

 recognized in this estimate compelled the establishment, when the second 

 form of new tenor bills was adopted, of the ratio of one to four. Old and 

 new tenor bills were sometimes emitted, side by side, in the same Act, and 

 thus it became necessary that one of these forms should be accepted as 

 the measure of value. Inasmuch as all values had been stated in old 

 tenor up to the issue of the new form, and as there were for a short time 

 two forms of new tenor having different measures of value in old tenor, it 

 was customary for writers to convert the bills of the new tenor into old 

 tenor in making statements of the amount in circulation. When, there- 

 fore, it is stated that there was in circulation in 1749 £1,900,000 of 

 public bills of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay, it must be 

 remembered that, if the taxes which were laid for the purpose of with- 

 drawing from circulation the old tenor bills had been paid exclusively in 

 these bills, there would have been in circulation at that time only 

 £475,000 in bills of the different forms of new tenor, and exchange, 

 instead of being 1100 or thereabouts, would have been only 275. While 

 such facts as these add greatly to the confusion of the situation, no just 

 appreciation can be acquired of the statements which I am about to sub- 

 mit, showing the movements of exchange, etc. during this period of 

 inflation, which does not take into consideration that in 1737 these disturb- 

 ing elements were introduced through the emission of the new tenor bill. 

 The following table, showing the rate of exchange and the price of 

 silver at different dates, 1702 to 1749, was made up by Dr Douglass.* 



* Douglass's Summary, Historical and Political, etc., Vol. I. p. 494. 



