Page:History of Fiat Money and Currency Inflation in New England from 1620 to 1789.djvu/12

  their Wives; and what ill-conveniences they find in them they bury; and what Vertues they are inrich't with they Admire and Magnifie. And thus you must do by your Bills for there is no doing without them; if you Divorce or Disseize yourselves of them you are undone; Therefore you must set them high in your Estimation; and be no ways Prodigal of their Reputation, so as to vilify or run them down; as tho' they had more mischief than Good in them."

The learned writer of this disquisition saw the needs of the people, recognized the conditions, but failed to point out the needed application. A Virginian writer very early in the century seemed to have touched upon the source of these financial ills in writing to a correspondent in London on the subject of "reducing all the Coynes of America to one standard." He says: "Which standard, I humbly conceive, shall be as near the intrinsic value of sterling as possible. " This bit of advice, which has the essence of wisdom in it, was thrust into the shadows by the luckless time-spirit. The colony's finances were wrestling on the brink of disaster, where every struggle served but to force them further toward the abyss of ruin.

The much desired inflation of the currency produced by the issue of £100,000 in 1716, had the same effect in forcing the hard money out of the community as any law which creates a twofold currency one of universal and intrinsic value, the other of local value will always have. A writer on the "Melancholy Circumstances of the Province," reviews the situation in the usual lugubrious strain:

"All the silver money which formerly made payments in trade to be easy, is now sent into Great Britain to make returns for part of what is owing there. We have been so deficient in farming and managing our own manufacture, lived so much above our abilities, spent so much of our imported commodities, that our money is gone, there is scarce a penny of it passing for a twelve-month."

The law of natural selection was in operation in the finances of New England before the law itself was known [240]