392 TRAVELS IN THE CONFEDERATION 



nominal value, paper dollars at the time being about as 

 50 to i of silver. Thus whoever before the war, or 

 even later, owed 50 hard dollars, or had merely bor- 

 rowed them, could now come off by the payment of 50 

 paper dollars, the fiftieth part, that is, of the true 

 worth ; the legally cozened creditor was obliged to re- 

 gard the debt as extinguished, or refusing, to expose 

 himself to informations and severe handling. It may 

 easily be fancied to what great injustice and oppression 

 such a decree must have given rise, which neverthe- 

 less did not accomplish the end proposed, the paper- 

 money of the Congress sinking at last to nothing, re- 

 pudiated by itself in some degree. The loss which the 

 holders of the paper-money sustained by its yearly and 

 daily falling value cannot be estimated, but there are 

 great and woful complaints in this matter generally. 

 It is indeed unpleasant for the Congress itself that its 

 most zealous adherents and friends, misled by patri- 

 otic credence in its golden promises, have of all people 

 lost the most. And it was discretion on the part of 

 the members of most of the Assemblies, that they had 

 their allowances paid not in paper but in natural prod- 

 ucts, as, for example, with wheat in Pensylvania, with 

 tobacco in Maryland and Virginia ; good proof that in 

 these very Assemblies they were either convinced of 

 the worthlessness of the paper, or felt the conveniency 

 of making the most of the situation. But after all that 

 may or can be said about the paper-money, it remains 

 none the less true that without it, (a tax wrung from 

 their subjects and certainly distributed very un- 

 equally), the Congress would have found it impossible 

 to raise the money needed for the war. 



At present the paper-money of the Congress is 



