ethought her of bills of credit. They
were issued, accepted, and redeemed, although the first holders suffered
great losses, and the last holders or the speculators were the only ones
that found them faithful pledges. The flood-gates once opened, the water
poured in amain. Every pressing emergency afforded a pretext for a new
issue. Other Colonies followed the seductive example. Paper was soon
issued to make money plenty. Men's minds became familiar with the idea,
as they saw the convenient substitute passing freely from hand to hand.
Accepted at market, accepted at the retail store, accepted in the
counting-room, accepted for taxes, everywhere a legal tender, it seemed
adequate to all the demands of domestic trade. But erelong came undue
fluctuations of prices, depreciations, failures,--all the well-known
indications of an unsound currency. England interposed to protect her
own merchants, to whom American paper-money was utterly worthless; and
Parliament stripped it of its value as a legal tender. Men's minds were
divided. They had never before been called upon to discuss such
questions upon such a scale or in such a form. They were at a loss for
the principle, still enveloped in the multitude and variety of
conflicting theories and obstinate facts.

One fact, however, was clearly established,--that a government could, in
great needs, make paper fulfil, for a while, the office of money; and if
a regular government, why not also a revolutionary government, sustained
and accepted by the people? Here, then, begins the history of the
Continental money,--the principal chapter in the financial history of
the Revolution,--leading us, like all such histories, over ground
thick-strown with unheeded admonitions and neglected warnings, through a
round of constantly recurring phenomena, varied only here and there by
modifications in the circumstances under which they appear.

It is much to be regretted that we have no record of the discussions
through which Congress reached the resolves of June 22, 1775: "That a
sum not exceeding two millions of Spanish milled dollars be emitted by
the Congress in bills of credit for the defence of America. That the
twelve confederated Colonies" (Georgia, it will be remembered, had not
yet sent delegates) "be pledged for the redemption of the bills of
credit now to be emitted." We do not even know positively that there was
any discussion. If there was, it is not difficult to conceive how some
of