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 B12 New issues of paper money. [i?86 commercial policy. Virginia went still further, and issued a call for a Convention of delegates from all the States to meet at Annapolis in September, 1786, and there agree on such a plan as, when adopted by the States, would enable Congress fully to protect the trade of the United States. But the Navigation Acts of the States and the good resolutions of the people came too late. The mischief was done. During the few months which had elapsed since the return of peace, the importation of British goods had been enormous. In 1784 the value of imported goods was reckoned at 1,700,000. Exports to Great Britain in the same time were valued at only ,700,000. The difference had to be paid in cash, for since the refusal of the States to allow the recovery of British debts in court, no American merchant could get credit in England. As a consequence, every sort of specie money was secured and sent out of the country. The country was quickly stripped of gold and silver ; the need of a circulating medium began to be seriously felt ; and the old cry went up for paper money. With a keen recollection of the dark days of 1779, when forty dollars had been paid for a hat, when fifty pounds in paper would not buy fifty pounds of sugar, and when a hundred dollars in bills of credit were asked for a barrel of flour, the multitude were not deterred from demanding a new issue of paper and a new Act to make it legal tender. Their demands were heard; and, before the summer of 1786 was over, the presses in Pennsylvania, in North and South Carolina, in Georgia, in New Jersey, in New York, in Rhode Island, were hard at work printing paper money. The history of that paper money was the history of the old continental issues retold. First came the bills ; then came depreciation ; and finally tender-laws, force-acts, and ruin. Nowhere was this so fully illustrated as in Rhode Island. There, so early as 1784, the supporters of paper money had attained to formidable numbers. In the spring of 1786 they carried the elections, secured the legislature, remitted the land-tax, suspended the excise, and issued .100,000 of paper money. The law declared that the bills should be loaned according to the apportionment of the late tax ; that they should be paid into the treasury at the end of fourteen years ; and that every farmer or merchant who came to borrow a few hundred pounds must pledge real estate for double the sum demanded. Many persons made haste to avail themselves of their good fortune, and mortgaged fields strewn thick with stones for sums such as could not have been obtained for the richest pastures. They had, however, no sooner obtained the money and sought to make a first payment at the butcher's or the baker's, than they found that a heavy discount was taken from the face- value. This, in the opinion of the holders of the paper, was an outrage. They maintained that, if it were lawful for the State to issue hard money, it was also lawful to issue paper money; and that every man who did