Page:History of Gardner, Massachusetts (1860) - Glazier.djvu/66

62 . The temporary act of 1782, making property a tender in discharge of pecuniary contracts, instead of the designed remedial effect, enhanced the evils of general insolvency, by postponing collections. The outlandish demands of the royalist refugees, who had been driven from large estates and extensive business, enforced with no lenient forbearance, came in to increase the embarrassments of the deferred pay day. At length, a flood of suits broke out. In 1784, more than 2000 actions were entered in the County of Worcester, then having a population less than 50,000, and in 1785, about 1,700. Lands and goods were seized and sacrificed on sale, when the general difficulties drove away purchasers. Amid the universal distress, artful and designing persons discerned prospect for advancement, and fomented the discontent by inflammatory publications and seditious appeals to every excitable passion and prejudice. The Constitution was misrepresented as defective, the administration as corrupt, the laws as unequal and unjust. The celebrated papers of Honestus, directed jealousy towards the judicial tribunals, and thundered anathemas against the lawyers, unfortunately for them, the immediate agents and ministers of creditors. Driven to despair by the actual evil of enormous debt, and irritated to madness by the increasing clamor about supposed grievances, it is scarcely surprising that a suffering and deluded people should have attempted relief, without considering that the misery they endured, was the necessary result from the confusion of years of warfare.