People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 April 1895 — FIGHT FOR LIBERTY. [ARTICLE]

FIGHT FOR LIBERTY.

THE FINANCIAL PLAN OF THE AMERICAN COLONIES. British Interference*—Robbed of Gold and Silver by Taxation the People Devised a Monetary System and Enjoyed Unequaled Prosperity. The fallowing interesting article concerning t)he money of colonial times is from the pen of Hon. John Davis of Kansas: “The currency of Pennsylvania was both a suocesß and a failure, and deserves special attention. It succeeded as long as it possessed the quality of legal tender. IL failed when the British government forbade it having that quality. Its use was compelled by the absence of coin, which had been drawn away by the British trade. Coin money being an exportable article, was always a fugitive in those colonial days. If could not be relied on as a basis for non-legal paper. Having no coin, Pennsylvania adopted a legal tender paper in 1723. It came to ah end through an act of the British parliament depriving It of the quality of legal tender. Being called before a committee of parliament, Dr. Franklin described the Pennsylvania money system as fellows: “Pennsylvania, before it made any paper money, was totally stripped of I its gold and silver, though it had from (: tkns to time, like the neighboring colonies, agreed to take gold and silver coins at higher nominal values, in hopes of drawing money into and retaining it for the internal use of the province. During that weak practice, sHver got up by degrees' to 8s 9d. per ounce—long before paper money was made. The difficulties for want of cash were accordingly very great, the chief part of the trade being carried i on by the extremely inconvenient | method of barter, when in 1723, paper • money was first made there (in Pennsylvania), which gave new life to business, promoted greatly t/he settlement of the new lands (by lending small sums to beginners, on easy interest, to be paid by installments) whereby the province has so greatly increased ini] inhabitants that the export from thence 1 hither (to England) is now more than ! ten fold what it then was.’’ Gov. Pownall, colonial governor of 1 Massachusetts, discussing the subject \ in hand, said: “I will venture to say that there j never .was a wiser or better measure— *] never one calculated to serve the in- i threats of an increasing country; that/' there never was a measure morel steadily pursued or more faithfully ex-i ecuted for forty years together than the loan offlee in Pennsylvania, founded! and administered by the assembly of thfU .province,"

Rev. John Twells of London, an able English writer, speaking of the American colonial finances, said: “This was the monetary system under which the American colonist prospered to such an extent that Burke said of them: ‘Nothing in the history of the world is like their progress.’ It was a wise and benefloial system, and its effects were most conducive to the happiness of the people. Take the case of a family, industrious and enterprising, driven by persecution or misfortune to seek a refuge in the wilds of the new world. With their scanty means they purchase a tract of land. Many years of hard labor, privation and anxiety would have been necessary to bring that family into a state of decent competency, had they been required to purchase geld and silver by labor and by the produce of labor, before they ceuld effect t l '-> improvements of their property. But half the yalue of his land was advanced to the head of the family in note 3, which circulated as money. With these notes he oould hire labor and purchase implements of huabanrjgy and cattle; and thus, where without these notes one acre could be cleared, cultivated and stocked in a year, ten would by the assistance of the paper money advanced, be reclaimed from the fewest and rendered productive. Thus hope entered the dwelling of the poor emigrant. “Ten years found him with the whole

of his debt to the government discharged, the proprietor of a happy home. And the kind hand of paternal government was stretched out still, to advance him again one half the increased value of his land and thus enable him to clear more of the forests, and to settle his children in new homes. Such was the system by which a set of miserable outcasts were converted, in a short space of time, into happy, ( contented, and prosperous colonists. “In an evil hour the British government took away from America its ‘representative money,’ commanded that no more paper bills of credit should be issued, and those out should cease to be legal tender.’ and collected the taxes in hard silver. This was in 1773. Now mark the consequences. This contraction of the circulating medium paralyzed all the industrial colonies; the most severe distress was brought home to every family; discontent was urged on to desperation, till, at last ‘humnn nature’ as Dr. Johnson phrases it, arose and asserted its rights.’ ” This is a truthful and fair description of the money which served the people in time of need, when coin had fled beyond the sea, or was locked up in the miser’s till. It will be observed that it rested entirely on the quality of legal tender, and it remained good and sound until that quality was withdrawn by the British government on purpose to destroy it, and thus to render the ooiony dependent for money on the usurers of England. The Penn-

syivanla currency did not depend on the land for its value, as some suppose. Ishe lands were merely security for the loans.