390 TRAVELS IN THE CONFEDERATION 







other methods were not open to it by which to complete 

 the great work of freedom, and that certainly and alas ! 

 the welfare of a few private persons must inevitably be 

 sacrificed (against the will of the Congress indeed) to 

 that of the whole community. However, the repre- 

 hensions of the upright are express, who regarded 

 other means as possible and proposed them, and the 

 complaints of suffering innocence continue. 



There was a time when printed bits of paper were to 

 the people as valuable as hard coin ; for paper-money 

 had already been introduced in all the provinces, 

 (under the royal government and by the King's 

 authority), to the furtherance of trade, and was kept 

 readily in currency because the public was not deluged 

 with it,* as was lightly and superabundantly the case, 

 after the first years of the war, under the Congress. 

 However, these notes, dirty, decomposed, patched, and 

 unreadable as they came to be, scarcely to be handled 

 without contamination, are still deserving of a sort of 

 respect. The hope merely of the end to be gained gave 

 them a value, and during the first years of the war 

 this hope was certainly very much alive. At that time 

 the paper-money issued by the Congress and the states 

 was wholly esteemed and was reckoned without ques- 

 tion as equal to silver and gold. But this kind of mint- 

 age being found to be so easy, new and other new 

 millions being struck off on all occasions in payment 

 of the costs of the war, credit began to weaken, and 

 could only be kept up for a short space by blind zeal on 

 the one hand and fear on the other. Sundry reasons 



* Each province might issue only a certain amount, not ex- 

 ceeding its capacities ; and proportioned to the needs of its 

 trade and disbursements. 



