PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. §3 



pie are accustomed to it so thoroughly that they have contracted 

 the consequent habit of preferring the very conditions of inse- 

 curity, reckless waste, and instability of all things financial, to 

 solid and normal methods of business. As early as 1690 Massa- 

 chusetts began the issue of bank paper in irredeemable quantity, 

 and her example was quickly followed by other colonies. As 

 fast as one issue depreciated into worthlessness it was followed 

 by another. Hardly an act of recklessness and folly which can 

 be attiiched to such a measure was omitted. The issues were 

 accompanied by acts making them a legal tender and a forced 

 circulation, and were followed by arbitrary and even cruel laws 

 designed to regulate their value. Penalties were fixed for refus- 

 ing them or for depreciating them, and these were harsh and 

 even outrageous. Numberless persons were robbed and ruined 

 without knowing how or why, while others grew suddenly rich, 

 and it is needless to say that the ones who suffered were those 

 who had before been honest, industrious, and thrifty, and those 

 who prospered were chiefly those who had speculated and cheated 

 successfully. The hard-earned savings of the many were trans- 

 ferred to the pockets of the few. And then came complaints 

 and outcries from thousands who had been victimized and who 

 clamored for redress. Yet the people who had been plundered 

 wqre the very ones who, by their votes and through their dele- 

 gates to the colonial legislatures, had effected the paper issues 

 and ordained the instrumentality by which they had been ruined 

 against the protests of wiser and richer men and over the vetoes 

 of governors who understood and vainly prophesied the disastrous 

 consequences. When the people had reaped the crop they had 

 sown and tasted its bitterness, the remedy which they demanded 

 was more paper money, and more was issued. The result was 

 perfectly natural. It gave at first some apparent relief, which 

 was quickly followed by distress greater than before. After 

 several repetitions of this indulgence "our fathers" began to 

 realize the true cause of the difficulty and attempted to recover 

 lost ground, but found that the downward road was much easier 

 to travel than the upward. Good resolutions gave way before 

 difficulties, and as national calamities are soon forgotten or only 

 vaguely remembered, and as the sons are ever ready to repeat 

 the errors of their fathers, the intervals of abstinence were gene- 

 rally short, and were followed by a relapse into the old vice. 

 Issue followed issue in dreary succession. Every scheme for 

 " basing" bank issues which ingenuity and cupidity could devise 

 to tempt people to accept paper was resorted to, each new plan 

 professing to avoid the errors of its predecessors and to rest upon 

 a secure foundation. At length, in 1751, the representations of 

 the colonial governors and substantial merchants were effectual 

 in securing an act of Parliament prohibiting all paper issues ex- 

 cept exchequer bills redeemable in one year with interest, or in 

 four years in case of war, and the colonies made a more serious 



