used to
accept their bills, or did anything to obstruct the circulation of them,
should, upon due conviction, "be deemed, published, and treated as an
enemy of his country, and be precluded from all trade or intercourse
with the inhabitants of these Colonies." And to enforce it there were
Committees of Inspection, whose power seldom lay idle in their hands,
whose eyes were never sealed in slumber. In this work, which seemed good
in their eyes, the State Assemblies and Conventions and Committees of
Safety joined heart and hand with Congress. Tender-laws were tried, and
the relentless hunt of creditor after debtor became a flight of the
recusant creditor from the debtor eager to wipe out his responsibility
for gold or silver with a ream or two of paper. Limitation of prices was
tried, and produced its natural results,--discontent, insufficient
supplies, heavy losses. Threatening resolves were renewed, and fell
powerless. It was hoped that some relief might come from the sales of
confiscated property; but property changed hands, and the Treasury was
none the better off: just as in France, a few years later, the whole
landed property of the kingdom changed hands, and left the government
assignats what it found them,--bits of waste-paper.

Meanwhile speculation ran riot. Every form of wastefulness and
extravagance prevailed in town and country,--nowhere more than at
Philadelphia, under the very eyes of Congress,--luxury of dress, luxury
of equipage, luxury of the table. We are told of one entertainment at
which eight hundred pounds were spent in pastry. As I read the private
letters of those days, I sometimes feel as a man would feel who should
be permitted to look down upon a foundering ship whose crew were
preparing for death by breaking open the steward's room and drinking
themselves into madness.

An earnest appeal was made to the States. The sober eloquence and
profound statesmanship of John Jay were employed to bring the subject
before the country in its true light and manifold bearings,--the state
of the Treasury, the results of loans and of taxes, and the nature and
amount of the obligations incurred. The natural value and wealth of the
country were held to view as the foundations on which Congress had
undertaken to build up a system of public finances, beginning with bills
of Credit because there was no nation they could have borrowed of,
coming next to loans, and thus "unavoidably creating a public debt: a
debt o