Page:History of Fiat Money and Currency Inflation in New England from 1620 to 1789.djvu/20

 notes. The New England provinces were in a weakened condition financially. Louisburg and Quebec had been captured. The effect of inflation was like a fever which leaves the patient with protracted ills. The depreciated bills of other New England provinces circulated under legislative protest in Massachusetts. As these bills were not redeemed by the specie received from England by the provinces, there was a plethora of them. During the period when the province of Massachusetts borrowed money from the people and did not make its obligations legal tender it had a larger prosperity as a community than when the phantasmagoria of inflation was dominant. Governor Hutchinson says in 1774: "There never has been a time since the first settlement of the Country, when the Treasury has been in so good a state as it now is." The year 1775 witnessed the revival of paper money as a legal tender by authority of the provincial congress. The nature of this currency was akin to the old bills of credit which seemed to have bequeathed to the new currency the destiny of fate. The whole system of fiat money fell by its own weight in 1778. Mr. Jonathan Amory, the great Boston merchant, says, December 16, 1780: "Everybody asks silver or gold or paper, as they please, paper having been for a considerable time at 75 per cent; goods bring three for one." The depreciation in fiat money was almost a constant factor in the finances of the continental times. Jonathan Amory says: "A good proportion of the money I took for debts was not worth one-third, and before I had a chance to lay it out, perhaps not one-sixth of what I had taken it for." The uncertainties of a fluctuating currency are always hazardous to business. In May, 1781, the continental currency had depreciated to five hundred to one of hard money. At this time the citizens of Philadelphia decorated themselves with paper dollars in the form of cockades and paraded the streets with a dog, tarred, his back covered with congress paper dollars. This incident marked the [248]