ed States were allowed to issue
bills of credit, and make them a tender in payment of debts. In the
Federal Convention the committee of detail suggested that this
permission might remain under the new constitution; but the suggestion
was almost unanimously condemned. All the ablest men in the convention
spoke emphatically against it. Gouverneur Morris urged that the federal
government, no less than the state governments, should be expressly
prohibited from issuing bills of credit, or in any wise making its
promissory notes a legal tender. He went over the history of the past
ten years; he called attention to the obstinacy with which the wretched
device had been resorted to again and again, after its evils had been
thrust before everybody's eyes; and he proved himself a true prophet
when he said that if the United States should ever again have a great
war to conduct, people would have forgotten all about these things, and
would call for fresh issues of inconvertible paper, with similar
disastrous results. Now was the time to stop it once for all. "Yes,"
echoed Roger Sherman, "this is the favourable crisis for crushing paper
money." "This is the time," said his colleague, Ellsworth, "to shut and
bar the door against paper money, which can in no case be necessary.
Give the government credit, and other resources will offer. The power
may do harm, never good." There was no way, he added, in which powerful
friends could so soon be gained for the new constitution as by
withholding this power from the government. James Wilson took the same
view. "It will have the most salutary influence on the credit of the
United States," said he, "to remove the possibility of paper money."
"Rather than grant the power to Congress," said John Langdon, "I would
reject the whole plan." "The words which grant this power," said George
Read of Delaware, "if not struck out, will be as alarming as the mark of
the Beast, in the Apocalypse." On none of the subjects that came up for
discussion during that summer was the convention more nearly unanimous
than in its condemnation of paper money. The only delegate who ventured
to speak in its favour was Mercer of Maryland. What Hamilton would have
said, if he had been present that day, we may judge from his vigorous
words published some time before. The power to emit an inconvertible
paper as a sign of value ought never hereafter to be used; for in its
very nature, said he, it is "pregnant with abuses, and li