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by the tender of neat cattle or other enumerated articles at an appraisement; but the creditor had only to wait till the year should expire. Repeated temporary stay-laws gave no real relief; they flattered and deceived the hope of the debtor, exasperating alike him and his creditor.* But when, in May 1786, a petition was presented from towns in Bristol county for an emission of paper money, out of one hundred and eighteen members in the house of representatives, it received only nineteen votes, and only thirty-five out of one hundred and twentyfour supported the plan of making real and personal estate a tender on an appraisement in discharge of an execution.

In like manner New Hampshire, after the peace, shunned the emission of paper money. Its people suffered less than Massachusetts, because they were far less in debt.

Alone of the New England states, Rhode Island, after the peace, resumed the attempt to legislate value into paper. The question had divided the electors of the state into political parties; the farmers in the villages were arrayed against the merchants and traders of the larger towns; and in May 1786, after a hard contest, the party in favor of paper money, with John Collins for governor, came into power.

In all haste the legislature authorized the issue of one hundred thousand pounds to be loaned out to any man of Rhode Island at four per cent for seven years, after which one seventh was to be repaid annually. These bills were made a legal tender except for debts due to charitable corporations. A large part of the debt of the state was paid in them.

To escape the very heavy fine for refusing to sell goods for paper as the full equivalent of specie,† the merchants of Newport closed their shops. The act speedily provoked litigation. In September a complaint was made against a butcher for refusing to receive paper at par in payment for meat. The case was tried before a full bench of the five judges. Varnum in an elaborate argument set forth the unconstitutionality of the law and its danger as a precedent. Goodwin answered that it conflicted with nothing in the charter, which was the fundamental law of Rhode Island. Judge Howell the next Minot's Insurrection of Massachusetts, 14. Compare Otto to Vergennes, 6 August 1786.

morning, delivering the unanimous opinion of the court, declared the acts unconstitutional and void, and dismissed the case as not within the jurisdiction of the court. At the decision, one universal shout of joy rang through the court-house. The assembly of Rhode Island summoned the judges to assign the reasons for their judgment. Three of the five obeyed the summons. At the next session of the legislature Howell, with two associates, defended the opinion of the bench and denied the accountability of the supreme judiciary to the general assembly. The assembly resolved that no satisfactory reasons had been rendered by the bench for its judgment, and discharged them from further attendance.

New York successfully extricated itself from the confusion of continental and state paper money; but in April of the fatal year 1788 its legislature, after long debates, made remarkable by the remonstrances of Duer, voted to emit two hundred thousand pounds in bills of credit. The money so emitted was receivable for duties, and was made a legal tender in all suits.*

In the council of revision strong but not successful objections were raised. Livingston,† the chancellor, set forth that a scarcity of money can be remedied only by industry and economy, not by laws that foster idleness and dissipation; that the bill, under the appearance of relief, would add to the distress of the debtor; that it at the same instant solicited and destroyed credit; that it would cause the taxes and debts of the state to the United States to be paid in paper. Hobart, one of the justices, reported that it would prove an unwarrantable interference in private contracts, and to this objection Livingston gave his adhesion. Morris, the chief justice, objected to receiving the bills in the custom-house treasury as money, and held that the enactment would be working iniquity by the aid of law; but a veto was not agreed upon. ‡

Livingston, the governor of New Jersey, communicating to its legislature, in May 1783, the tidings of peace, said: “Let us show ourselves worthy of freedom by an inflexible attachment

*Jones and Varick's New York Laws, ed. 1789, 283.

+ Street's Council of Revision of the State of New York, 409.
Street's Council of Revision of the State of New York, 412, 415.

to public faith and national honor; let us establish our character as a sovereign state * on the only durable basis of impartial and universal justice." The legislature responded to his words by authorizing the United States to levy the duty on commerce which had been required, and by making a provision for raising ninety thousand pounds by taxation for the exigencies of the year. In settling debts it gave legal power to the court and jury to decide the case to the best of their knowledge, agreeably to equity and good conscience.+ But in the following December it returned to paper money, and sanctioned the issue of more than thirty-one thousand pounds to supply the quota of the state for the year.

In the conflict, the arguments against paper money were stated so fully and so strongly, that later writers on political economy have added nothing to the practical wisdom of the thoughtful men of that day; and yet in 1786 a bill for the emission of one hundred thousand pounds marched in triumph through its assembly, which sat with closed doors. The money was a tender; if it was refused, the debt was suspended for twelve years. In the mean time the act of limitation continued in force, and in effect destroyed it. In the council the bill was lost by eight voices to five. In consequence of this check, the effigy of Livingston, the aged governor, was drawn up to the stake near Elizabethtown, but not consigned to the flames from reverence for the first magistrate of the commonwealth; that of a member of the council was burned. In May the governor and council thought proper to yield, and the bill for paper money became a law. A law for paying debts in lands or chattels was repealed within eight months of its enactment.

The opulent state of Pennsylvania by a series of laws emerged from the paper currency of the war. But, in December 1784, debts contracted before 1777 were made payable in three annual instalments. In 1785 one hundred and fifty

*Mulford's New Jersey, 473.

† Act of June 1783. Paterson's Laws of New Jersey, ed. 1800, 50. Wilson's Laws of New Jersey, ed. 1784, 363.

# Grayson to Madison, 22 March 1786. Otto to Vergennes, 17 March 1786. Dallas's Laws of Pennsylvania, ii., 236.

thousand pounds were issued in bills of credit, to be received as gold and silver in payments to the state; * and fifty thousand pounds were emitted in bills of credit on loan. † The bank of the United States refusing to receive these bills as of equal value with its own, its act of incorporation by the state was repealed.

In February 1785 Delaware called in all its outstanding bills of credit, whether emitted before or since the declaration of independence, with orders for redeeming them at the rate of one pound for seventy-five. After six months they would cease to be redeemable. ‡

Maryland, in its June session of 1780, emitted thirty thousand pounds sterling to be a legal tender for all debts and contracts. In the same session it was enacted that all contracts expressed in writing to be in specie were to be paid in specie. In 1782 it enacted a stay-law extending to January 1784, and during that time the debtor might make a tender of slaves, or land, or almost anything that land produced; but the great attempt in 1786 to renew paper money, though pursued with the utmost violence and passion, and carried in the assembly, was successfully held in check by the senate.

Georgia, in August 1782, stayed execution for two years from and after the passing of the act. In February 1785 its bills of credit were ordered to be redeemed in specie certificates, at the rate of one thousand for one. This having been

done, in August of the next year fifty thousand pounds were emitted in bills of credit, which were secured "by the guaranteed honor and faith" of the state, and by a mortgage on a vast and most fertile tract of public land.#

South Carolina attracted special attention. In February 1782 that state repealed its laws making paper money a legal tender. Twenty days later the commencement of suits was suspended till ten days after the sitting of the next general assembly. The new legislature, in March 1783, established,

Dallas's Laws of Pennsylvania, ii., 257.

+ Ibid., 294.

Laws of Delaware, ed. 1797, 801.

#Watkins's Digest of the Laws of Georgia, 314, 315.

Statutes at Large of South Carolina, iv., 513.

as in other states, a table of depreciation, so that debts might be discharged according to their real value at the time of the original contract.* On the twenty-sixth day of March 1784 came the great ordinance for the payment of debts in four annual instalments, beginning on the first day of January 1786; † but before the arrival of the first epoch a law of October 1785, which soon became known as the "barren land law," authorized the debtor to tender to the plaintiff such part of his property, real or personal, as he should think proper, even though it were the very poorest of his estate, and the creditor must accept it at three fourths of its appraised value. Simultaneously with this act South Carolina issued one hundred thousand pounds in bills of credit, to be loaned at seven per cent. The period for the instalments was renewed and prolonged. ‡

During the war, North Carolina made lavish use of paper money. In April 1783, after the return of peace, it still, under various pretences, put into circulation one hundred thousand pounds-the pound in that state being equal to two and one half Spanish milled dollars; and in the same session, but after much debate, suits were suspended for twelve months. The town of Edenton, using the words of James Iredell, instructed their representatives and senator in these words: "We earnestly entreat, for the sake of our officers and soldiers, as well as our own and that of the public at large, that no more paper money under any circumstances may be made, and that, as far as possible, the present emission may be redeemed and burned. But the protest availed nothing. In November 1785, one hundred thousand pounds paper currency were again ordered to be emitted, and to be a lawful tender in all payments whatever. So, while the confederation was gasping for life, the finances of North Carolina, both public and private, were threatened with ruin by an irredeemable currency.

The redemption of the country from the blight of paper money depended largely on Virginia. The greatest state in the union, resisting the British governor and forces at the outbreak of the revolution, conquering the North-west, the chief reliance of the army of Greene at the South, the scene of

*Statutes at Large of South Carolina, iv., 563. + Ibid., 640, 641.

Ibid., 710-712.

# Life of Iredell, ii., 46, 63.

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