Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/232

any redemption at par. In March, 1780, the states were required to bring in the bills at forty for one; and new bills were then to be issued in lieu of them, bearing an interest of five per cent., redeemable in six years, to be issued on the credit of the individual states, and guaranteed by the United States.^[1] This new scheme of finance was equally unavailing. Few of the old bills were brought in; and of course few of the new were issued. At last the continental bills became of so litde value, that they ceased to circulate; and in the course of the year 1780, they quietly died in the hands of their possessors.^[2] Thus were redeemed the solemn pledges of the national government!^[3] Thus, was a paper currency, which was declared to be equal to gold and silver, suffered to perish in the hands of persons compelled to take it; and the very enormity of the

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teresting account of the history of paper money during the revolution, in an article written for the Encyclopédie Méthodique. 1 Jefferson's Corresp. 398, 401, 411, 412.

1. 6 Journal of Convention, 18th March, 1780, p. 45 to 48.
2. 2 Pitkin's Hist. ch. 16, p. 156, 157; 1 Jefferson's Corresp. 401, 402, 411, 412.
3. The twelfth article of the confederation declares, "that all bills of credit emitted, &c. by or under the authority of congress, &c. shall be deemed and considered, as a charge against the United States, for payment and satisfaction whereof the said United States and the public faith are hereby solemnly pledged." When was this pledge redeemed? The act of congress of 1790, ch. 61, for the liquidation of the public debt, directs bills of credit to be estimated at the rate of one hundred dollars for one dollar in specie. In Mr. Secretary Hamilton's Report on the public debt and credit in January, 1790, the unliquidated part of the public debt, consisting chiefly of continental bills of credit, was estimated at two millions of dollars. What was the nominal amount of the bills of credit, which this sum of two millions was designed to cover at its specie value, does not appear in the Report. But in the debates in congress upon the bill founded on it, it was asserted, that it was calculated, that there were about 78 or 80 millions of paper money then outstanding, valued at a depreciation of 40 for 1. 3 Lloyd's Deb. 282, 283, 288.