1/79] REV. WILLIAM SMITH, D. D. 1 5 



• We now were beginning to feel severely the calamity, which 

 Dr. Smith had foreseen, of entering on war before we were at all 

 prepared for it, and the consequent issue of paper money beyond 

 our ability to redeem it on demand. The crisis, indeed, had not 

 yet come. We were only on the swelling, or rather on the hugely 

 swollen tide of a paper money system. But this was worse than 

 the crisis which soon after did occur. The extravagant deprava- 

 tion of morals was frightful. Arnold was in command of the city, 

 and peculation, speculation, debauchery, and fraud of every kind 

 prevailed. It is set forth in a paper by Mr. F. D. Stone, read in May, 

 1879, before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, entitled, " Phila- 

 delphia a Century Ago, or the Reign of Continental Money."* 

 The minutes of the Board of Trustees show that on the 25th of 

 March, 1779, both Dr. Smith and Dr. Alison represented to the 

 Board that their receiving, " in the present currency," only double 

 the nominal sums of their former salary was no way adequate to 

 the increased price of necessaries, and prayed that the fact might 

 be taken by the Trustees into consideration. The Board ordered 

 that in the notices of next meeting it should be inserted that the 

 disposition of money would be part of the business before it. At 

 this next meeting the salaries were raised. 



The work of the College now goes on, though it is to some 

 degree the work of reconstruction. Dr. Smith and Dr. Alison, at 

 a meeting of May 4th, 1779, informed the Board that they had 

 examined one Mr. Cochran, who offered himself as an usher in 

 the Latin School at the rate of ;^400 per annum ; and that they 

 were of opinion that, though he had not for some time been 

 employed in teaching the classics, yet by diligent study he might 

 supply an usher's place. It was therefore ordered that he be 

 received on a quarter's trial. 



Dr. Smith's universal usefulness exhibits itself now even above 

 what it did in earlier times. He was requested by the Board to 

 visit the tenants on the Perkasie Manor, and to report the state 

 of the farms ; to give the tenants notice that their leases being 

 expired they must come to Philadelphia and enter into new agree- 

 ments for rents in wheat, or the price thereof as it may be at 

 Philadelphia, yearly, when the same becomes due. This, with an 



* See The Pennsylvania Journal of Biography and History, Vol. 3., p. 361 



