The country continuing to suffer greatly from the spurious notes put upon the market, Congress was compelled to call in those issued on May 22, 1777, and April 11, 1778, which had been more extensively counterfeited than any others. The order for calling them in excited great complaints. No one would take them in trade, as the government was not immediately prepared to issue new notes for the old. The loss and inconvenience caused, as well as the distress prevailing at the time, will be seen by the following letter, preserved in the Pennsylvania archives:

"How comes it that Congress, by their resolve relative to the two emissions of May, 1777, and April, 1778, have set the country in such a ferment, and given room for a set of speculating people who are enemies to the real good of their country to take occasion from it to depreciate the value of these two emissions in the manner they have done, and are now daily doing? There are a set of them here very busy in this matter; that by their management within this day or two it is rendered twenty-five per cent worse than the other emissions; which, God knows, were sunk low enough before. Our butchers, bakers, and farmers begin to refuse it entirely, owing to the stories propagated about it. Must people who have this money either lose a fourth of it or starve? And when the time comes for exchanging it, must they spend half the value of the little they have in taking it to Philadelphia to place it in the office? and after that wait sixty days, and attend a second time for payment? Indeed, I think the resolve is not one of the wisest, and wish to see these evils speedily remedied. The merchants, or rather hucksters, of Philadelphia are playing the same there. Surely Congress can call in these or any other emissions in a manner less injurious to the country. I am so angry at this affair that I hardly know what I write, and so vexed at the daily schemes

expense is incurred." And he adds, on the point of vesting Congress with competent powers, "Our independence, our respectability and consequence in Europe, our greatness as a nation hereafter, depend upon it. The fear of giving sufficient powers to Congress, for the purposes I have mentioned, is futile. A nominal head, which at present is but another name for Congress, will no longer do. That honorable body, after hearing the interests and views of the several States fairly discussed and explained by their representatives, must dictate, and not merely recommend and leave it to the States to do afterwards as they please; which, as I have observed before, is in many cases to do nothing at all." - Life and Writings of Washington, vol. i. pp. 349-350.

1 The hopes of the enemy were largely fed on the probable failure of the Continental currency. General McDougal, writing from Peekskill to General Joseph Reed, says, "The enemy is confident our currency will fail us, ... and that, whenever the supplies for the army fail, the people will return to their allegiance. He is now counterfeiting another emission, which will soon be out." - Life of President Reed, vol. ii. p. 57.

for depreciating of our currency, that I sometimes think we don't deserve the liberty we have been contending for, while such miscreants are suffered to breathe among us. And, indeed, I can't help thinking that the Congress's own servants, such as quartermasters, commissaries of purchase, &c., do as much injury to it as any other speculators; for the more they lay out or charge for articles which themselves have engrossed, the more are their commissions."

The following letter, written from Albany to the "Philadelphia Packet," furnishes another illustration of the manner in which the assumed "hucksters and forestallers" were dealt with:

"Last week, two transgressors who sold rum for more than the regulated price were publicly cried through the city, by order of the committee, as having incurred the just indignation of the people. The inhabitants ordered them immediately to appear before them, being met at the market-place; where, by falling on their knees on a scaffold, they acknowledged themselves guilty, and promised to abide by and assist the orders of the committee: upon which they were discharged. Hard money is not to pass here any longer: we have lately hung up and burned in effigy a dealer in hard money."

One of the greatest alleged grievances during the war was the conduct of a class who were assumed to have purchased merchandise for the very purpose of forestalling the market and growing rich out of the necessities of consumers. They were loaded with every opprobrious epithet, and were not unfrequently thrown into prison and plundered of whatever they possessed. With a currency steadily declining in value, all holders of merchandise appear in effect to be forestallers, by refusing to sell except at an advance necessary not only to meet the present, but the future decline, likely to take place before they can use the money they receive. They must, in addition to a fair profit, charge a considerable advance to cover the risks of the future. What with them is only an exercise of ordinary prudence, is by those who (from a constant decline in the value of the notes they hold) suffer a heavy loss, often treated as a conspiracy to defraud and injure them, to be punished by the severest penalties. With the public, it is always that prices are advanced, not that the money has declined in value. The great majority of holders of merchandise at such periods have not only no design to defraud or oppress, but would gladly sacrifice all profit could they be protected

against loss. It is impossible that it should be otherwise; for the greatest amount of profit, in the long run, is to be gained under a currency uniform in volume and value. The manner in which this class are often treated shows how completely an irredeemable currency subverts the sense of those using it. Another class, who are real offenders, but who often escape all annoyance and censure, are those who are able to monopolize such large amounts of this money as to control the market on a grand scale, and, by alternately raising and depressing prices, often make a profit equal to the degree of the fluctuation they can cause. A legal-tender currency always tends to flow to the great centres of trade, for the reason that it cannot distribute itself, like gold, or be absorbed in the arts, or retired by the operations of production and trade. It is always upon the market in full volume, its amount bearing no relation to the quantity of merchandise to be moved by it. It is wholly unlike a convertible currency, which is always disappearing, to reappear only to symbolize new creations of merchandise. The latter, as soon as it has served its purpose by reaching for consumption that which it represents, becomes functus officio. Such a currency, consequently, bears an exact relation to that which is to be moved by it. In addition to the monopoly of money which a government currency always serves to create, those who hold it are always able to increase or diminish its purchasing power, by increasing or diminishing its apparent value; that is, the credit of the government issuing it. This credit, therefore, becomes at once the great object of attack by a large and powerful class. So far as they can affect its value, it is the same as if they could, upon the occasion, create the instruments by which is to be measured the extent or quantity of whatever they buy or sell. The credit of all governments, and with it the prices of their securities, is constantly fluctuat ing; but none so much so as that of governments issuing legal-tender notes, as these are regarded as the last resort of incompetency and exhaustion. The credit of such governments, and with it the standards of value, are in the hands of the rich and unscrupulous; who, as far as its subsistence is concerned, may have a whole community in their power. A legal-tender currency, therefore, in whatever light viewed, is the crowning blunder and injustice of a State. It corrupts the morals; arrays class against class; exposes the unoffending

to the fury of merciless mobs, impelled by a sense of wrong and suffering, the cause of which they cannot understand; creates the most odious of all monopolies, that of money; and saps the very foundation of material prosperity, by reducing all industry and enterprise to the mere hazards of games of chance. It tends directly to reduce society to a condition of barbarism; for the reason that, from the want of an accurate measure of value, almost every act becomes more or less tainted with injustice and fraud.

a measure enor

At the close of 1778, the total amount of notes authorized and issued equalled $101,500,000 of which $6,000,000 were authorized in 1775; $19,000,000, in 1776; $13,000,000, in 1777; and $63,500,000, in 1778. Their value at the close of the last year was reduced to about eight to one of coin. The military operations for the year were on the whole unfavorable. Great distrust and despondency were the natural results. By this time, the most potent enemy with which the nation had to contend was its money. Very little coin was in circulation. Its notes were the common measure of value, mously depreciated, and never two days the same; which no honest man dared trust or use; but which could, at its face, legally discharge debts contracted to be paid in coin. No wonder the anarchy and distress which prevailed, the hand of every man being against his neighbor; or the impotence of Government, and the impossibility of carrying out any plan of operations which the Commander-in-chief might propose. Almost every thing that was undertaken came to nothing, from the lack of money to raise and pay troops, to provide military supplies and means of transportation. In vain did Congress invest Washington with dictatorial powers. He could urge and entreat the States to act; but was as incapable of compelling obedience as was Congress itself. The soldiers, whose pay was at best a pittance, saw that even this was fast losing all its value. The discontent, occasioned as much by the depreciation of what they held as by the non-payment of what was due them, ended, in the winter of 1778-79, in a mutiny in the army stationed at Morristown, which at one time threatened the gravest consequences. These were only averted by the address and influence of Washingtoh. While the army

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was unable, for want of means, to achieve any thing worthy of itself, and was filled with discontent bordering upon insubordination, the operations of commerce and trade were almost completely paralyzed. Never was there a more wretched picture than that presented by the United States for the four years beginning with 1776 and ending with 1779. Any one reading this sketch may well wonder that the cause of the patriots did not utterly fail. One reason was the imbecility and incapacity with which it was opposed. With the exception of Lord Cornwallis, there does not appear to have been a single officer high in command in the British army possessing any capacity for military or civil affairs. Another was the vast extent of country to be overrun and occupied, if the rebellion were to be put down. Although the colonists had been most loyal subjects of the crown, such was the injustice with which they were treated, and the sufferings they had endured, that, after the war had been waged a few years, no concession made by the Home Government could ever have brought them back to their former allegiance. They could have been held in subjection only by an armed force in every little community, far beyond the ability of the enemy to maintain. If finally worsted in the field, great numbers would have taken to the forests, from which they would have carried on a guerilla warfare, which would never have allowed him to be weak in force or off his guard. It is well-known that it was the purpose of Washington, had the final result been against him, to have crossed the Alleghanies for a home in the vast solitudes of the Mississippi Valley. Another reason was the independent condition of the people. Nine out of every ten were cultivators of the soil. Nearly all that was consumed by a family was produced by its own labor, so that the interruption of trade and the destruction of the foreign commerce of the country did not, after all, weigh so heavily upon the nation. The accounts that we get of the time come from the cities, the inhabitants of which, chiefly concerned in trade and manufactures, suffered severely. The first effect of the government notes was to create a general inflation in prices and great activity in all business operations, to be soon followed by a corresponding depression and inactivity; which, as their cause was not understood, produced great complaints, without lead