Page:History of Fiat Money and Currency Inflation in New England from 1620 to 1789.djvu/21

 downfall and inglorious defeat of the united efforts of the continental congress in support of a fiat currency.

A retrospect of the currencies of New England prior to the organization of the federal government reveals only overcasts and shadows. Weeden says:

"With the forecast of genius, they [i. e., Potter, author of "Key to Wealth," and Gov. John Winthrop of Connecticut] struck at the essential nature of a currency, which is the exchange of values through the medium of a bill. Their ideas were crude, their methods were incomplete. Their plans, such as they were, never came to pass; yet they opened the way for a currency. The path has led through dark jungles and tangled swamps; it has sent off many byways into the morasses of bankruptcy and repudiation. Danger and toil have always attended the explorers in finance, and they always will. Nevertheless the path is the way of civilization. The greater the development of civilized life, the larger will be the values in paper and credit."

The pathway to our present monetary standard is lined with the wrecks of different forms of currency, country pay, debased coinage of the Boston mint, credit bills of the Colony of Massachusetts, fiat money of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, legalized fiat money, inflated currency, land bank bills, silver notes, treasury notes, continental currency. Each form of currency, the product of necessity, relieved the wants of trade for a time, but periodically the support gave way and each had been leaning on a reed.

Fiat money means degeneration; degeneration precipitates inflation; inflation culminates in repudiation.

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Boston, Mass.