Here was an act of the British parliament, to be executed by officers of royal appointment, levying a tax on consumption in America. In England, it was afterwards appealed to as a precedent; in America, the sixpence duty on molasses had all the effect of a prohibition. Even in case of forfeitures, nobody appeared to demand the third part given to the king for the colony. The act of parliament produced no revenue, and led only to clandestine importations, and appeared to be no more than a regulation of commerce, a new development of the colonial system. But here a new difficulty arose. The commercial dependence on the metropolis kept the colonies in debt to England, and created a demand for remittances; so that specie disappeared. America was left without a currency. In the hope of providing for the want, the provinces manufactured bills of credit, and instituted loan offices. The first emissions of provincial paper had their origin in the immediate necessities of government. In times of peace, provinces which had an empty treasury issued bills of credit, redeemable at a remote day, and put in circulation, by means of loans to citizens, at a low rate of interest, on the mortgage of lands. The bills, in themselves almost worthless, from the remoteness of the day of payment, were made a lawful tender. The borrower, who received them, paid annual interest on his debt to the state; and this interest constituted a public revenue, obtained, it was boasted, without taxation. The scarcity of money was every more and more complained of: all the silver money was sent into Great Britain to make returns for what was owing there. Yet the system was imitated in every colony but Virginia. In Massachusetts, a struggle ensued for a new application of the credit system, by means of a land bank. The design was long resisted as a fraudulent undertaking, and was acknowledged as tending to give to the company power and influence in all public concerns, more than belong to them, more than they could make good use of, and therefore unwarrantable; yet, but for the interference of parliament, it would at last have been established. History of the Colonization of the United States, 1841
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 11:25:37 +0000