DAVIS. — MASSACHUSETTS CURR?]NCY. 205 



the Province. When the first instalments on this loan fell due, in 1716, 

 £100,000 was put out and this was followed by £50,000 more imme- 

 diately after the last instalments on the first popular loan were payable, 

 in 1721. When by the terms of these loans they should have been 

 retired, a new loan of £60,000 was made, and doubtless this process 

 would have been continued but for the interference of the Board of 

 Trade. The meaning of the attempt is obvious. The Assembly was 

 seeking to furnish a medium for trade, which should not be subject to 

 the annual calls for retirement under which bills for government expen- 

 diture were issued. 



Among the vai'ious experiments then made there were but two 

 attempts to give these bills a credit based upon a promise that they 

 should be paid in coin, the first being of little consequence, as it ap- 

 plied to only £1500 emitted in 1693.* The promise in this, as well as 

 in the later and more important instance, was not on the face of the bill, 

 but was in the Act of emission, and in the second case was so worded 

 that in practical operation it did not prove beneficial for the bills in 

 question. The Act under which the £9,000 in bills of the first new 

 tenor were emitted in February, 1736-7, contained a provision for 

 levying a tax in 1741, adequate for their retirement, payable not only 

 in the bills themselves, but in old tenor bills or in certain produce. It 

 was further provided that after that session, and until 1742, the duties of 

 impost and excise should be paid in coin, and although it was thought 

 that the several funds established for the retirement of the outstanding 

 bills would be adequate for the purpose and all would be out of the way 

 by that time, these duties were pledged as a still further security. If by 

 chance it should happen that any of these new tenor bills should be 

 outstanding at any time after December 31, 1742, the possessor was to 

 be entitled to receive from the treasurer for every six shillings and 

 eightpence in these bills, an ounce of silver or the like value in gold. 

 All of the first new tenor bills were issued with this promise of redemp- 

 tion in December, 1742, attached, and all of them were declared to be in 

 value equal to silver at six shillings and eightpence an ounce, an esti- 

 mate which was above the true rating of silver based upon sterling 

 exchange, as has already been pointed out, and also above the rate at 

 which the bills circulated, as appears from the discussions which subse- 



* The delusive promises to be found in some of the later Acts of emission, to 

 the effect that the silver and gold which should be received for commodities 

 turned in by tax collectors were to be held for the benefit of possessors of bills, 

 were not entitled to grave consideration. 



