prise
which had long been wanting, and a confidence to buyer and seller which
they had not felt since the first year of the war. In his public
operations the Superintendent used it freely, and, using it at the same
time wisely, was enabled to call upon it for aid to the full extent of
its ability without impairing its strength.

Henceforth the financial history of the Revolution, although it loses
none of its importance, loses much of its narrative-interest. No longer
a hand-to-hand conflict between coin and paper,--no longer the
melancholy spectacle of wise men doing unwise things, and honorable men
doing things which, in any other form, they would have been the first to
brand with dishonor,--it still continues a long, a wearisome, and often
a mortifying struggle: men knowing their duty and refusing to do it,
knowing consequences and yet blindly shutting their eyes to them. I will
give but one example.

After a careful estimate of the operations of 1782, Congress had called
upon the States for eight millions. Up to January, 1783, only four
hundred and twenty thousand had come into the Treasury. Four hundred
thousand Treasury-notes were almost due; the funds in Europe were
overdrawn to the amount of five hundred thousand by the sale of drafts.
But Morris, waiting only to cover himself by a special authorization of
Congress, made fresh sales upon the hopes of the Dutch loan and the
possibility of a new French loan, and still held on--as cautiously as he
could, but ever boldly and skilfully--his anxious way through the rocks
and shoals that menaced him on every side. He was rewarded, as such men
too often are, by calumny and suspicion. But when men came to look
closely at his acts, comparing his means with his wants, and the
expenditure of the Treasury Board with the expenditure of the Finance
Office, it was seen and acknowledged that he had saved the country
thirteen millions a year in hard money.

And now, from our stand-point of the Peace,--from 1783,--let us give a
parting glance at the ground over which we have passed. We see thirteen
Colonies, united by interest, divided by habits, association, and
tradition, engaging in a doubtful contest with one of the most powerful
and energetic nations which the world had ever seen; we see them begin,
as men always do, with very imperfect conceptions of the time it would
last, the lengths to which it would carry them, or the sacrifices it
would impose; we see them boldly ado