sed, therefore, the fair
trader became aware that the non-importation experiment, practically
considered, was open to certain objections; whereas the unfair trader
was more in favor of the experiment the longer it endured, being every
day more convinced that the non-importation agreement ought to be
continued and strictly adhered to as essential to the maintenance of
American liberties.

The practical defects of non-importation were likely to be understood,
by those who could ever understand them, in proportion to the decay of
business; and in the spring of 1770 they were nowhere better understood
than in New York, where the decay of business was most marked. This
decrease was greatest in New York, so the merchants maintained, because
that city had been most faithful in observing the agreement, importation
having there fallen from 482,000 pounds to 74,000 pounds during the
year. It is possible, however, that the decay of business in New York
was due in part and perhaps primarily to the retirement, in November,
1768, of the last issues of the old Bills of Credit, according to
the terms of the Paper Currency Act passed by Parliament during Mr.
Grenville's administration. As a result of this retirement of all the
paper money in the province, money of any sort was exceedingly scarce
during the years 1769 and 1770. Lyon dollars were rarely seen; and the
quantity of Spanish silver brought into the colony through the trade
with the foreign islands, formerly considerable but now greatly
diminished by, they, stricter enforcement of the Townshend Trade Acts,
was hardly sufficient for local exchange alone, to say nothing of
settling heavy balances in London, although, fortunately perhaps, there
were in the year 1769 no heavy London balances to be settled on account
of the faithful observance of the non-importation agreement by the
merchants. The lack of money was therefore doubtless a chief cause
of the great decay of business in New York; and some there were who
maintained that the faithful observance of the non-importation agreement
by the merchants was due to the decay of trade rather than the decay
of trade being due to the faithful observance of the non-importation
agreement.

Whatever the true explanation of this academic point might be, it was an
undoubted fact that business was more nearly at a standstill in New
York than elsewhere. Accordingly, in the spring of 1770, when money was
rarely to be seen and debtors were sel