RETURN FROM PITTSBURG 351 



the merchants there will be little likely to find new 

 credit in Great Britain ; old debts being paid, as the 

 custom is, so as to make new ones. But the next diffi- 

 culty is the question : how are they to be paid ? Many 

 of the old debtors are now dead ; others are ruined ; 

 and it is held that such debts must be borne by the 

 community, because by the peace-conventions the obli- 

 gation was assumed of paying all British debts without 

 exception. This proposition is zealously supported by 

 most of the merchants, who desire to see the total 

 debt, (to be regarded now as an obligation of the 

 whole state), paid by a generally imposed tax, hoping 

 that in this way the sums they owe may creep in with 

 the rest. Naturally the people in the country, upon 

 whom the burden of the tax would fall, are not of the 

 same opinion, although they themselves have borrowed 

 again of the merchants what these have borrowed in 

 England. From everything which has been said for 

 and against, it is plain in advance that there will be 

 very little disposition to assume these debts as a com- 

 mon burden. The result will prove this.* 



Bladensburgh, a small place on the eastern branch 

 of the Potowmack (here navigable only for boats and 

 shalops) has a tobacco-warehouse and inspection- 

 office. These tobacco-warehouses are, equally for the 

 planter and the merchant, convenient and safe public 

 institutions. They are distributed at suitable distances 

 on all the rivers and little bays in Maryland and 

 Virginia. Thither must the planters bring and deposit 

 all their tobacco before they can offer it for sale. 

 Responsible superintendents carefully examine the 



* Has proved it. Little or nothing has been paid. 



