"We in this Colony are seated on a very fruitful soil, the product whereof with our labor and industry and the divine blessing thereon, would sufficiently furnish us with and procure us all the necessaries of life and as good a medium of exchange as any people in the world have or can desire. But so long as we part with our most valuable commodities for such Bills of Credit, as are no profit, we shall spend a great part of our labor and substance for that which will not profit us; whereas, if these things were reformed we might be as independent, flourishing and happy a colony as any in the British Dominion."
In May of the same year, the famous traveler, John Ledyard, and twenty-five other merchants of Connecticut caught up the theme, and in a petition to their legislature said: "The medium of trade whereby our dealings are valued and weighed, ought to be esteemed as sacred as any weights and measures whatever, and, to maintain justice, must be kept as stable, for as a false weight and a false dollar is an abomination to the Lord, a false and unstable medium is equally so, as it occasions as much iniquity, and is at least as injurious."
The Connecticut Assembly supported these memorialists, excluded the bills of paper money of Rhode Island, and overcoming every embarrassment, at last, like Massachusetts, redeemed every nine shillings of its paper money with one shilling in specie. After the first day of November, 1756, all accounts in Connecticut were kept in lawful money.
MR. MANUFACTURER: The experience of the other New England States is practically the same as that you have just recited in Connecticut. In 1717 the Council of New Hampshire was zealous to follow the fashion of issuing paper money by loan and issued £15,000.
Rhode Island, also, in July, 1710, on its first emission of Bills of Credit, declared them equal in value to "money," and made them receivable in all public payments. In November, 1711, Rhode Island discharged a claim by a loan of its Bills of Credit to the amount of £300 for four years free of interest.
New Jersey, too, tried its hand at the same scheme, following the lead of Pennsylvania. In December, 1783, it issued £31,250, and in 1786, it struggled hard to issue a larger amount, but William Patterson, who was afterwards a member of the Supreme Court, resisted the proposal with inflexible courage, and here are some of the words which he employed: "An increase of paper money, especially if it be a tender, will destroy what little credit is left, will bewilder conscience in the mazes of dishonest speculations, will allure some and constrain others into the perpetration of knavish acts, will turn vice into a legal virtue, and sanctify iniquity by law. Men have, in the ordinary transactions of life, temptations enough to lead them from the path of rectitude; why then pass laws for the purpose, or give legislative sanction to positive acts of iniquity? Lead us not into temptation is a part of our Lord's prayer worthy of attention at all times, and especially at the present."