LAST ROYAL GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS 13 



of the following year he became a member of the Con- 

 gregational church on Hanover Street, known at that 

 time as the New Brick Church. Throughout his life 

 he was strictly religious, according to the Puritanism 

 of the eighteenth century, which in Massachusetts had 

 already come to be much more genial and liberal than 

 that of the seventeenth. 



Hutchinson's public life began soon after his mar- 

 riage. In his diary he tells how much pleasure he felt 

 when, in his twenty-sixth year, he was chosen a select- 

 man for the town of Boston, and a few weeks later a 

 representative in the General Court. ' But his public 

 career was stormy from the outset. The people were 

 then greatly agitated over the question of paper money. 

 As long ago as 1690, upon the return of Sir William 

 Phips from his disastrous expedition against Quebec, 

 Massachusetts had issued promissory notes, called 

 bills of credit, in denominations from 2 s. to io\ 

 they were receivable for sums due to the public treas- 

 ury. The inevitable results followed. The promissory 

 notes issued by a government which had no cash for 

 paying its debts, and because it had no cash, of course 

 fell in value. Coin was therefore driven from circu- 

 lation, and there was a great inflation of prices, with 

 frequent and disastrous fluctuations. The disturbance 

 of trade became serious, and then, as always, trick- 

 some demagogues played upon the popular ignorance, 

 which sought a cure for the disease in fresh issues of 

 paper. Pretty much the same nonsense was talked in 

 1737 as afterward in 1786, and yet again in 1873. 

 The trouble extended over New England, and it is 

 curious to observe, between three of the states, the 

 same differences of attitude as in the great crisis of 



