90 The Financial History of Connecticut. 



felt disposed to pay interest on claims which it had for years been 

 willing to settle. Therefore, the interest on the debt still outstanding 

 was reduced to the amount which was due on this given principal 

 on April 30, 1805. This action reduced the debt to the extent of 

 nearly five hundred dollars and on April 1, 1820, it stood at $2,835.60. 

 Twenty-eight dollars had been paid during the year ending on that 

 date and from 1820 until March 31, 1838, about seven hundred 

 dollars more was paid. The debt as given in the Comptroller's 

 Report (Ms.) of June, 1838, was $2,142.29 on April 1 of that year. 

 No further payments are recorded and finally, in his report to 

 the assembly in May, 1843, the comptroller made the following 

 statement in regard to the debt: "For many years the comptrollers 

 have reported a few hundred dollars as the amount of outstanding 

 evidences of debt due from this state, in the form of colony bills, 

 issued before the Revolution, and state bills, state notes, interest cer- 

 tificates, etc., issued during and immediately after the Revolution. . . . 

 For several years the comptrollers have ceased to receive them; for 

 the reasons that great numbers were known to have been counter- 

 feited by the enemy in the Revolutionary War, and no one is now 

 remaining to discriminate between the true and the false. That 

 many must have been lost or destroyed — probably to as great amount 

 as the sum now nominally due; and consequently, a like amount 

 of counterfeits must have been received and paid. And from the 

 fact that few or none of the persons or their relatives, for whose 

 claims they were issued would be benefited by their payment, 

 but, on the contrary, they are now in the hands of those who re- 

 ceived them without giving value, or came into possession from acci- 

 dental circumstances. The present comptroller has not, there- 

 fore, deemed it necessary to state what he considers but a nominal 

 debt, but merely to remark that it remains in amount the same 

 as for many years past." This ends the public record of the old 

 Revolutionary debt, although since 1810 the greater part of it had 

 been merely nominal. 



8. Bounties and Encouragements. 



As in the former period, the direct payments made from the state 



treasury for bounties were insignificant.^ In 1832, the general 



assembly once more tried to encourage the silk industry 



Hemp^^ by providing for the payment of a bounty of one dollar 



to every person transplanting on his land one hundred 



1 Cf. pp. 55, 56. 



