tact with corruption. The spirit of gambling,
confined in the beginning and lost to the eye, like Le Sage's Devil, had
swollen to its full proportions, and, in the garb of speculation, was
undermining the foundations of society. Rogues were growing rich; the
honest men who were not already poor were daily growing poor. The laws
that had been made in the view of propping the currency had served only
to countenance unscrupulous men in paying their debts at a discount
ruinous to the creditor. The laws against forestallers and engrossers,
who, it was currently believed, were leagued against both army and
country, were powerless, as such laws always are. Even Washington wished
for a gallows like Haman's to hang them on; but the army was kept
starving none the less.

The seasons themselves--God's visible agents--seemed to combine against
our cause. The years 1779 and 1780 were years of small crops. The winter
of 1780 was severe far beyond the common severity even of a Northern
winter. Provisions were scarce, suffering universal. Farmers, as if
forgetting their dependence on rain and sunshine, had planted less than
usual,--some from disaffection, some because they were irritated at
having to give up their corn and cattle for worthless bills, and
certificates which might prove equally worthless. Some, who were within
reach of the enemy, preferred to sell to them, for they paid in silver
and gold. There were riots in Philadelphia, put down at the point of the
sword. There was mutiny in the army, and this, too, was put down by the
strong hand,--though the fearful sufferings which had caused it
justified it almost in the eye of sober reason.

It is easy to see why farmers should have been loath to raise more than
they needed for their own use,--why merchants should have been unwilling
to lay in stores which they might be compelled to sell at prices so
truly nominal that the money which they received would often sink to
half they had taken it for before they were able to pass it. But it is
not so easy to see why this wretched substitute for values should have
circulated so freely to the very last. Even at two hundred for one, with
the knowledge that the next twenty-four hours might make that two
hundred two hundred and fifty, or even more, without the slightest hope
that it would ever be redeemed at its nominal value, it would still buy
everything that was to be sold,--provisions, goods, houses, lands, even
hard money itself. Down