Page:A History of Banking in the United States.djvu/30

 trading. This society issued bills, "but their currency being soon at a stand, the government were obliged in justice to the possessors, to emit £50,000 on loan to enable those concerned in the society to pay off their society bills in colony bills. Their charter was vacated and a wholesome law was enacted that for any single person or society of persons to emit and pass bills for commerce, or in imitation of colony bills, penalty should be as in case of forgery, or of counterfeiting colony bills."

In 1735, a private bank was formed in New Hampshire, to which reference is made in the following: "Whereas sundry persons of New Hampshire have adopted measures the past year to issue promissory notes of a most uncertain and sinking value, as they are payable in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island bills, or in silver, gold or hemp, at the unknown price they may be at in Portsmouth, in New Hampshire, Anno 1747, whereby his Majesty's good subjects will be great sufferers, should they part with their goods and substance for them or accept of them in payment, etc." "This was a banking speculation, which promised much advantage to its promoters, but very little to the public. The larger amount of its paper, like all such currency of that day in New England, reached Bostontthe great mart for the northern colonies; but placed under the ban of the law, its market was spoiled for this Province."

The tract concerning the Colonial Currencies, which is included in the Overstone collection, was published about 1740. The author shows how the depreciated paper money hurt the wages and salaried classes, because the depreciation with respect to specie never measured the loss in purchasing power. "The shopkeepers are become, as it were, bankers between the merchants and tradesmen [mechanics], and do impose upon both egregiously. Shop notes [store-pay], that great and insufferable grievance of tradesmen, were not in use until much paper money took place." The author thinks that he can prove that the specie value of the whole currency constantly declined as greater issues were made; and he shows how little cliques of persons who were possessed of political power got the loans into their hands, in the first instance, and sold them at a premium.

March 19, 1740: "In continuance of the controversy between the Representatives and the Governor, he repeats his account of the Province arrearages. He says that there are £210,000 in bills now circulating, £40,000 are on loan, and the rest, £170,000, former Assemblies have promised shall be collected into the Treasury, by a tax in the several years specified, by 1742, and that this will be a heavy burden, especially as no provision is made to supply the place of paper currency. Such being the pecuniary condition and prospect of the Province, several projects are advanced by companies to supply the deficiency of money. The petitions of these associations, being laid before the Legislature, and assigned to a Committee for consideration, are reported on. One of them was John Colman and