The clamor for paper money increased, and, like a raging fever, approached toward a crisis. In every town there was a party in favor of it, and the public papers were continually filled with declamations on the subject. It was said that an emission of bills of credit would give a spring to commerce, and encourage agriculture; that the poor would be able to pay their debts and taxes; that all the arguments against issuing paper were framed by speculators, and were intended to serve the wealthy part of the community who had monopolized the public securities, that they might raise their value and get all the good bargains into their own hands; that other States in the Union had issued paper bills, and were rejoicing in the happy effects of their currency without any depreciation; that the people had a right to call upon their Representatives to stamp a value on paper, or leather, or any other substance capable of receiving an impression; and that, to prevent its depreciation, a law should be enacted to punish with banishment and outlawry every person who should attempt by any means to lessen its value.

While these scenes of bankruptcy, ruin and demoralization were taking place in the northern end of the Confederation, similar ones were occurring in the southern end. Ramsay, in the second volume of his "History of South Carolina," beginning on page 428, thus details the situation in that State:

The little of gold and silver that was in circulation soon found its way to Great Britain. The people of Carolina had been but a short time in the possession of peace and independence, when they were brought under a new species of dependence. So universally were they in debt beyond their ability to pay, that a rigid enforcement of the laws would have deprived them of their possessions and their personal liberty, and still left them under incumbrances; for property when brought to sale under execution, sold at so low a price as frequently ruined the debtor without paying the creditor. A disposition to resist the laws became common. Assemblies were called oftener and earlier than the Constitution and laws required. The good and evil of representative government became apparent. The Assemblies were a correct representation of the people. They had common feel

ings, and their situations were in most cases similar. These led to measures which procured temporary relief, but at the expense of the permanent and extended interests of the community. Laws were passed in which property of every kind was made a legal tender in the payment of debts, though payable according to contract in gold or silver. Other laws installed the debt, so that, of sums already due, only a third, and afterward only a fifth, was annually recoverable in the courts of law. Numbers were clamorous for large emissions of paper money armed with the sanction of legal tender. This old resource in cases of extremity had been so overdone in the Revolutionary war, that many doubted the possibility of attaching credit to anything in the form of bills of credit. After some time, an emission of £100,000 sterling, secured by a mortgage of land, or a deposit of plate, was risked. The smallness of the sum, and the ample security of the fund on which it was emitted, together with the great want of some circulating medium, and an agreement of the merchants to receive it in payment at its nominal value, gave it credit and circulation.

The effects of these laws, interfering between debtors and creditors, were extensive. They destroyed public credit and confidence between man and man; injured the morals of the people; and, in many instances, insured and aggravated the final ruin of the debtors for whose temporary relief they were brought forward. The procrastination of payment abated exertions to meet it with promptitude. In the meantime, interest was accumulating, and the expenses of suits multiplied by the number of installments. At no time, before nor since, were the fortunes of attorneys so rapidly or so easily made. At no period has an equal number of planters been involved in embarrassments from which they were never extricated, or only extricated by more than ordinary sacrifices.

The eight years of war in Carolina were followed by eight years of disorganization, which produced such an amount of civil distress as diminished with some their respect for liberty and independence. Several apprehended that the same scenes which had taken place in England in the seventeenth century, after a long and bloody civil war, would be acted over in America by a fickle people, who had neither the fortitude nor the wisdom to govern themselves.

Equally disintegrating influences were at work in Connecticut. Under date of Sept. 20, 1786, Otto, the French Minister in New York, wrote home to his government, as follows:

In the small State of Connecticut alone more than five hundred farms have been offered for sale to pay the arrears of taxes. As these sales take place only for cash, they are made at very low price, and the proprietors often receive not more than one tenth of the value. The people feel the deadly consequences of this oppression, but, not being able to discover its true cause, it turns upon the judges and the lawyers. In the States which have paper money, the rigor of the laws is less desolating for the farmer, since he can always get paper enough to satisfy his engagements; and, besides, the creditors are less urgent.

Affairs in Pennsylvania were no better. Beginning on page 35 of "The New Olive Branch," Mathew Carey says:

I have in 1786 seen sixteen houses to let in two squares of about eight hundred feet in one of the best sites for business in Philadelphia. Real property could hardly find a market. The number of persons reduced to distress, and forced to sell their merchandise, was so great, and those who had money to invest were so very few, that the sacrifices were immense. Debtors were ruined without paying a fourth of the demands of their creditors. There were most unprecedented transfers of property. Men worth large estates, who had unfortunately entered into business, were in a year or two totally ruined; and those who had a command of ready money quadrupled or quintupled their estates in an equally short space. Confidence was so wholly destroyed that interest rose to two, two and a half, and three per cent per month. And bonds and judgments and mortgages were sold at a discount of twenty, thirty, forty, and fifty per cent. In a word, few countries have experienced a more awful state of distress and wretchedness.

Chief-Justice Marshall, taking a general survey of the situation throughout the Confederation, says, in the

fifth volume of his "Life of Washington," beginning on page 88:

In many of those States which had repelled every attempt to introduce into circulation a depreciated medium of commerce, or to defeat the annual provision of funds for the payment of the interest, the debt sunk in value to such a degree that those creditors who were induced by their necessities, or want of confidence in their rulers, to transfer their public securities, were compelled to submit to a loss of from ten to sixteen or seventeen shillings in the pound. However unexceptionable might be the conduct of the existing Legislature, the hazard from those which were to follow was too great to be encountered without an immense premium. In private transactions, an astonishing degree of distrust also prevailed. The bonds of men whose competency to pay their debts was unquestionable, could not be negotiated but at a discount of thirty, forty, and fifty per centum: real property was scarcely vendible; and sales of any article for ready money could be made only at a ruinous loss. The prospect of extricating the country from these embarrassments was by no means flattering. Whilst everything else fluctuated, some of the causes which produced this calamitous state of things were permanent. The hope and fear still remained that the debtor party would obtain the victory at the elections; and, instead of making the painful effort to obtain relief by industry and economy, many rested all their hopes on legislative interference. The mass of national labor, and of national wealth, was consequently diminished. In every quarter were found those who asserted it to be impossible for the people to pay their public or private debts; and, in some instances, threats were uttered of suspending the administration of justice by private violence.

The testimony so far presented establishes conclusively the following points: 1. That only very low duties on imports (scarcely to be dignified by the name of restriction) were levied by any State, and that these duties were rendered nugatory by the counteracting laws and practices of other States. 2. That, in consequence, the system of free trade with foreign nations

existed with hardly any impediment whatever. 3. That the country was inundated with the influx of European and Asiatic merchandise. 4. That manufacturing establishments in the Confederation were crippled, prostrated, or utterly ruined by the overmastering competition from abroad. 5. That an exhaustive drain of specie for export speedily followed, until the American people, from New Hampshire to Georgia, were left almost completely without a circulating medium. 6. That property, real and personal, depreciated to a frightful degree. 7. That, in absence of ability to engage in legitimate enterprises, a craze for speculation seized upon the community, mainly taking the form of traffic in public and private securities. 8. That bankruptcy became general, the courts were crowded with suits, the prisons overflowed with debtors, the lawyers fast acquired wealth by the multiplicity of fees, and the farms, houses, and personal property of the unfortunates were sacrificed to clear off trifling obligations. 9. That even necessary taxes often could not be collected without levy and sale. 10. That relief was sought in stay laws, installment of debts, property-tender acts, suspension of the operation of the courts, emission of paper money, and various like expedients. 11. That all the supposed palliatives served only to intensify the universal distress. 12. That the movement of events was steadily from bad to worse, until perplexity and foreboding became the predominant feelings of the time. 13. That the parent cause of this brood of evils was the free-trade system, which led, by a succession of cumulative consequences, to greater and still greater calamities.