042 TAXATION AND DEBT. 



lative act whatever, and none were passed from 1727 to 1731. But the 

 Lower House prevailed in 173(3, not, however, without a strong protest 

 from Arthur Middleton, James Kinloch and Joseph Wragg, in passing 

 an Act to emit £210,000 in bills of credit, declared in the Act itself to be 

 equal to about £30,000 sterling. In 1746 a second sum of £210,000 was 

 issued by the same authorit}^ and loaned out at eight per cent., as the 

 first had been. During this jDeriod the provincial currency Avas some- 

 times as low as ten for one, and averaged seven for one of sterling. 

 " Proclamation money," which was an aggregate of the depreciation es- 

 tablished by Queen Anne's proclamation of 1708, determining the value 

 of coin in the provinces at one-quarter advance on sterling, and the de- 

 preciation of provincial currency fixed at four for one in 1722, passed at 

 the rate of five for one of sterling. 



During the French and English wars South Carolina paid in taxes, 

 from the year 1755 to 1765, the enormous sum of £2,020,652, of Avhich 

 £535,303 were raised in the year 1760. The last emission of provincial 

 paper currency was in 1770, amounting to the sum of £70,000, and valued 

 at about £10,000 sterling. The total amount of paper money issued by the 

 province during these sixty-eight years was £605,000, of which more than 

 two-thirds was secured by mortgage, and this sum greatly exceeded the 

 amount in circulation at any one time, as the earlier issues were called in 

 before the later ones were thrown into circulation. The conclusion of the 

 early legislators, after a long experience, and a full discussion of the ad- 

 vantages and disadvantages of an irredeemable paper currency was, that, 

 " while under proper restrictions it might be useful to a certain extent, 

 proper restrictions were seldom imposed, and seldomer observed." 

 (Ramsey.) 



The last colonial tax raised in South Carolina was in 1769, for about 

 £9,600 sterling, or twenty-four times as much as the first tax levied 

 eighty-seven years before ; as both periods " were times of peace, requir- 

 ing no extraordinary expenditure, this fact is a strong proof of the pro- 

 gressive improvement of the country." (Ramsey.) 



For five years previous to the Revolution there was great scarcity of 

 money in South Carolina. The importation of about 5,000 negroes an- 

 nually by Great Britain caused the balance of trade to be against the 

 colony. Gold and silver were very scarce. No tax bills had been passed, 

 and there was no emission of paper currency by the Assembly for several 

 years. The clerk of the House of Commons merely issued certificates to 

 the public creditors, that their demands should be provided for in the 

 next tax bill. This stringency was temporarily mitigated by certain 

 gentlemen, men of large estate, who, in 1775, issued their joint and 

 several notes, in convenient sums, payable to bearer, to the amount of 



