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CHAPTER VIII.

THE DISCUSSION, 1730-1740.

The examination of the pamphlet literature in connection with the proposed Bank in 1714 was absolutely necessary for the development of our subject. Between 1730 .and 1740 the story of the rise of the Land Bank can be traced with sufficient detail without making use of the contributions of the pamphleteers. Yet the treatment of the subject would be inadequate which should reject what can be gained from these sources, and the story of the Land Bank would fail in the development of the violent conflict which was precipitated upon the community by its organization if some review should not be given of the war of words which then took place. For this reason the question of the discussion is again taken up, on its revival in 1730, when the general situation was somewhat as follows:

A dispute between Belcher and the representatives had resulted in a temporary check to the career of inflation. The high water mark of the currency, prior to the great inflation under Shirley, had in fact been reached about 1725 and 1726, that is, if we assume that the collection of the loans was generally enforced and that such taxes as were laid for the purpose of retiring the bills were in the main brought into the treasury.¹ On the other hand the lowest point for many years was reached just prior to the passage of the Supply Bill in 1733. The scarcity of currency was so noticeable at

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that time that Hutchinson called attention to it. “In 1733,” he said “there was a general complaint throughout the four governments of New England of the unusual scarcity of money.”¹ This scarcity of money combined with the deadlock between Belcher and the representatives evidently revived hope in the hearts of those who favored banks of issue and they renewed their applications to the assembly for the right to issue currency and inaugurated again the pamphlet warfare. It was at this time that Jacob Wendell and others preferred their petition for an emission of fifty thousand pounds in bills of a new form to be loaned to merchants and others, or if it should not be deemed advisable for the province to enter into the scheme, then they prayed for an incorporation so that they might carry on the affair in their private capacity.²

It was about two years after Wendell filed this petition that the new series of pamphlets began to appear. The first was put forth without date, but was evidently issued about 1733. Several pages were devoted to Rhode Island bills of which the author says, “for want of a sufficient medium of our own to buy with they are become as currant as ours and will buy anything on equal terms with our Province Bills.” The Rhode Islanders, he goes on to say “avoid as much as may be the receiving their own bills in payment of the goods they sell us.” This pamphlet contained a new proposition for a private bank.³ A number of merchants and

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traders were to enter into a copartnership and issue bills or notes to circulate in lieu of money as a medium of exchange. They were to oblige themselves to give the same credit to these bills or notes as they then did to the bills issued by the government. As far as practicable, they were to force the circulation of the notes by a species of boycott on those who should refuse to receive them. The copartnership was not to engage in trade, but simply to lend the notes at interest. Adequate security was to be demanded for loans, real estate being preferred. The bank was also apparently intended as a bank of deposit; for its advantages as a place where money could be left are pointed out. It may be inferred that the writer of this pamphlet had in mind the issues which a company of Boston merchants actually made at this time, partly in consequence of the peculiar position of the different colony issues.

In July, 1733, came the Rhode Island loan of £100,000 which caused the Boston merchants to organize and issue £110,000 of their own notes, redeemable in instalments covering ten years, in silver at nineteen shillings per ounce. The emission of £76,500 in this province was made in November, 1733, and then came the feeble attempt of the New Hampshire merchants, in imitation of the Merchants’ Notes.

In 1736, a pamphlet was published in which the writer accused the merchants who had issued the Merchants’ Notes, of being themselves instrumental in causing the premium on these notes. They were buying

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them up at an advance, he said, in order to make it impossible for those who had borrowed them on mortgages to redeem their estates. He could not understand why the assembly should hesitate to pass a law making province bills a lawful tender for obligations contracted in these notes.¹

A scheme for bringing the province bills to a silver basis was promulgated in 1736, by a pamphleteer who could not see why if the province had no external trade, “leather, paper, or anything else we agreed to, and put a stamp on” should not “answer for money as well as silver”² provided no more was furnished than there was occasion for. His plan, he alleged, had been several times before the General Court. The government was to emit an adequate amount of new bills, to be let out to such persons as would oblige themselves to pay annually for ten years for each thousand pounds one hundred and ten pounds in silver coin at the rate of six shillings and ten pence per ounce, or in gold coin in proportion. At the end of five years the redemption of the bills thus issued was to begin. The possessors could then exchange them for one-half coin, one-half new bills. The bills were to be a legal tender. The circulation of bills of other governments was to be forbidden.

In considering the practicability of this proposition, the statement that when it was put forth silver was rated in the province at twenty-seven shillings an ounce, seems fatal. The fact, however, must not be overlooked that in February, 1736-37, the government was able to

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float a new bill on the basis of one of the new bills for three of those in which the above silver price is stated.¹ This shows the possibilities in this direction and makes, what seemed at first glance chimerical and impracticable, reasonable, and with the backing of men of property, quite within the range of practical application.

A proposition having much in common with the plan suggested in the pamphlet was submitted to the General Court, in 1734. In 1738, subscriptions were solicited from Boston merchants in behalf of a somewhat similar scheme, which had been promulgated by Thomas Hutchinson, the father of the governor, and which for a short time was so favorably received that hopes were entertained of its success. The names of both, Thomas Hutchinson, the father and the son, are to be found among the subscribers to this scheme. It is stated that in 1736, the governor published a small pamphlet upon the subject of paper money.² It is not improbable that the pamphlet under consideration is the one referred to. Both the Hutchinsons were in favor of the several efforts put forth about this time for the return to specie payments, and the expression used in the tract relative to stamping leather or paper for a currency, is one which the governor made use of in his history.³

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The contribution of the year 1737, to the pamphlet warfare consisted in a brief proposition for a Land Bank.¹ The nominal amount of notes of this bank was set at £500,000, of which £200,000 were to be emitted on loans on real security at six per cent. The rest were to be negotiated “by transfer,” which meant, perhaps, that accounts were to be opened and transfers of credits made upon the books of the bank. Bills of other governments were to be discredited by the partners. The writer alleged that there could be no such thing as over-trade. The greater the importation, the cheaper the imported goods, and the higher the rates that would be received for produce of the province. Money he conceived to be less safe than land security as a basis for a bank.

In 1738, a plan was proposed for the emission of a new form of bills by the province, which should be lent out, payments on the loans to be made in annual instalments in coin, thus bringing the Province to a specie basis. This scheme was vigorously opposed by a pamphleteer, who apparently would have endured the admitted evils of the old bills rather than hazard the intricate experiment of the new.² He thought old-tenor bills in most respects superior to silver for money, and even recommended the colony of Rhode Island to emit bills at

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a low rate of interest, for short periods, alleging that “the length” was the only just objection to the last emission of that colony.

This called forth a reply which was attributed to Dr. William Douglass,¹ a practising physician in Boston, and an uncompromising advocate of what may be called “sound money” principles. In addition to the part which Douglass took in the pamphlet warfare concerning the currency and the banks, he published a history, entitled A Summary, Historical and Political . . of the British Settlements in North America. The Summary is frequently cited by historians, but it is doubtful if full justice is done to the work, in consequence of the extravagant way in which the author expresses his opinions. Eliot, in his Biographical Dictionary, says that the Summary is “a collection of things which came into his head, whether they related to his family, his private squabbles, or the affairs of the publick.” Palfrey calls him “a master of ribaldry”; says he is not “trustworthy as to facts,” and styles him a “conceited censor.”² The appearance of the history was the occasion of a libel suit, brought by Admiral Knowles against Douglass. Adam Smith, on the other hand speaks of him in the Wealth of Nations, as “honest and downright Dr.

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Douglass.”¹ Whatever we may think of Douglass’s style, we must recognize in him a vigorous champion of sound money, and an able and well informed writer, to whose works we are forced to turn for many facts concerning currency and exchange.

In the reply which Dr. Douglass thus issued, he discussed the legal tender quality of province bills,² and said that nothing ought to be a tender but what was a tender all over the commercial world. He also pointed out instances of the bad effect of making bills a legal tender. He thought a paper credit founded on a silver specie currency might be a good expedient; but argued that the province bills constituted a province debt, and that private bills on a proper foundation would really be better than public bills. Large emissions of public paper money begot extravagance. Wherever there were several sorts of currencies in circulation, the basest was destined to become the common currency. He was of opinion that if the public paper credit were gradually removed, trade would find the gold and silver to fill its place. Paper money he asserted, could not answer in the adjustment of the balance of trade with foreign countries. Silver, he said, was of so universal demand all over the world that the continued additions to it were like water thrown into the ocean.

The year 1739 contributed little to legislation or discussion. An act was passed forbidding persons to pass or receive bills of the neighboring governments emitted after May 1, 1738, unless they were made redeemable by lawful money, within ten years from their first emission. John Read, of Boston, submitted to the General Court a

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plan for a bank of issue based upon a twenty per cent. fund of silver. He also proposed by collecting interest on loans in silver to accumulate a silver fund which, in ten years, would amount to seventy per cent. of the circulation of the bank. The proposition apparently did not meet with favor.

A curious proposition for a hybrid bank to be run jointly by the province and a company of merchants appeared in 1740.¹ The notes were to be at the rate of twenty shilling an ounce for silver and were to be signed by a committee of the General Court and by agents in the name of the company. They were to be delivered by the province to the company, and payment was to be made by the Company in silver in ten annual instalments. The scheme was impracticable enough; but it is interesting to note one method by which the writer sought to gain a cheap popularity for it. He proposed that 3,000 ounces should “be given to Harvard College so far to make good the loss their stock has sustained by the fall of the credit of your Province bills.”

An intelligent discussion of the currencies of the several British plantations in America, which leads up to a comparison of the propositions for the Land and Silver Banks, was issued in pamphlet form in 1740.² This pamphlet, which is by Dr. Douglass, gives details of the growth of the paper currency, of the changes in the rate of silver, showing the coincidences with large emissions, and points out by dates the gradual postponement of the calling in of the province bills. It shows who

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were the real sufferers by these emissions and proves by estimates of the purchasing power of the currency afloat at different periods that the increase of supply found a compensation in the increased premium of silver, so that large issues did not actually add to the circulating medium. The writer was of opinion long credits were the result of an inefficient medium of trade. He condemned the Land Bank, but thought a properly organized Silver Bank might be beneficial.

In a postscript to the Discourse,¹ Douglass says: “Let us not despair, it is not impossible to give silver again, it’s currency; let us tread our footsteps back, and we shall naturally return to where we came from. That is, as the increasing quantity of paper money drove away silver a gradual lessening of the same will make room for this better currency: 1. As bills grow scarce, the merchants will be obliged to convert some part of that commodity, silver, into cash, as in other trading countries, no man can trade to advantage without cash. 2. The scarcity of our province bills will effectually bring a discount upon the bills of the neighboring colonies, because premiums will be given in other bills, for bills of our own province to pay taxes; and no more bills being emitted from time to time than sufficient for the present charge of Government, our bills may be brought to proclamation or sterling value.”

The Discourse concerning the currencies of the British plantations is not only the most valuable contribution to the contemporary literature on this subject, but the work also commands attention because the erroneous entry of its title in some of our book lists has caused a complication of errors, which requires detailed explanation.

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The Discourse, according to Sabin,¹ was originally printed in London in 1739; reprinted in Boston in 1740, with a postscript; reprinted in London in 1751, and again reprinted in London in 1857. Mr. Wilberforce Eames, of the Lenox Library, says with regard to the first London edition, that it was undated, and is variously put under 1739, 1740, and 1741, in different catalogues. The 1857 edition was in the collection of tracts edited by J. R. M’Culloch, and published by Lord Overton.² The reprinted pamphlet bore upon its title page “Boston, printed mdccxl, and London; Reprinted mdccxl. Winsor in the Narrative and Critical history of America, states that editions of the pamphlet were published in 1739, 1740, 1751, and 1757.³ The 1757 is obviously meant for 1857. The Discourse was recently reprinted by the American Economic Association.⁴ In this reprint the name of the author is given on the title page without indication that it was an insertion of the editor.

The original London edition was 54 pages in length. The Boston edition had 47 pages, and there was added a postscript devoted to a reply to a pamphlet published the same year, entitled “An Inquiry into the nature and uses of money.” The Postscript, or “Postcript” as it is entitled in the publication, was paged continuously with the pamphlet, and swelled the number of pages to 62. The two are to be met with together and separately. The London edition of 1751 mentioned the postscript in the title page, and was also 62 pages in length.

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Sabin has the following entry in his Dictionary: “[Hutchinson.] Dissertation on the Currencies of the British Plantations in North America and Observations on a Paper Currency. Boston, 1741. 8vo. pp. 62+ Postscript [ibid.].” The name being in brackets indicates that the publication was anonymous. The “ibid.” apparently means that this pamphlet is to be found in the Boston, Harvard College, and Athenæum Libraries. No such pamphlet is to be found in either of these libraries. I am indebted to Mr. Wilberforce Eames for the suggestion that Sabin’s entry was probably based upon a similar entry to be found in Haven’s list in the Transactions of the American Antiquarian Society.¹ A pamphlet entered under 1740, is there described under the title “Dissertation on the Currencies of the British Plantations in North America; and Observations on a Paper Currency,” etc., as an octavo of sixty-two pages, supposed to have been written by Thomas Hutchinson. The next entry in this list is “Dissertation. Postscript to the above. Boston.” Assuming that Mr. Eames’s suggestion is correct, we can understand where Sabin got his “62 pp. + Postscript.” The assertion that a pamphlet of this title was attributed to Hutchinson, was repeated by Mr. Winsor, but no authority was given by him for the statement.²

Obadiah Rich contributed his share towards the confusion which exists in the catalogues in connection with this pamphlet by entering under 1741 in his Bibliotheca Americana Nova, “The currencies of the British Plantations in America. 8vo. London.” A pamphlet was published that year entitled “Observations occasion’d by reading a pamphlet intitled a Discourse,” etc. The

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copy which was owned by Mr. Rich is now in the John Carter Brown Library, and Mr. George Parker Winship informs me that the bound volume is backed “Currencies of the British Plantations.” The title which is obviously suggested by that of the Discourse, must account for the entry in Rich’s published list.

The only reasonable solution of the entry in Haven’s list seems to be that it rested upon an improper transcription of the title of Douglass’s Discourse; Sabin, of course followed Haven, and Winsor relied upon Sabin and Haven. If this be admitted then it follows that the connection of Hutchinson’s name with the authorship was unwarranted.

In both of the pamphlets issued by Dr. Douglass he had discussed the proposition laid down by the person who in 1738 had published a pamphlet attacking the proposed plan for a new form of bills. This author felt compelled to reply , and put upon the market a printed document of seventy-eight pages, in which he developed a scheme of relief and answered the two pamphlets issued by Dr. Douglass.¹ Silver, he says, has an accidental value through the common consent of the world; if this were withdrawn, it would be of no value. Province bills have no intrinsic value; but they have an accidental value like silver. This is based on the promise of the government and the consent of the people to receive them. They are not universal, but local commodities. That they are commodities he infers from a comparison of their functions with that of silver. Money is the commodity chosen by the world in general,

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or by any community of people in particular, to pass in trade and for which contracts and agreements are usually made. Values of ordinary commodities change with the proportion between the quantity to be sold and the demand for that quantity. Judgment may be formed of the change of value of money by comparing it with other things in the market. Perhaps the best way to form an opinion of the change of the value of silver money, is by the influence it has on the mode of living. The change of the rate of interest is evidence of the change in the proportion of quantity of and demand for money. Measured in this way, the value of silver in 1740 is only one-third what it was in 1691. Province bills have not undergone any other change than that common to all commodities. No man has been obliged to let his money under six per cent. The irregularity of their emission has caused irregularity in the rise of silver, but by the mere operation of trade it would have risen in any case. The variations in the quantity of silver produce the same effect. He makes a comparison between Great Britain and Massachusetts Bay as to the number of the people, the yearly expense and the quantity of money, and concludes that they have in Great Britain a sum of money equal to one-third of their yearly expenses, while in the province there is only one-twentieth. The balance of trade with Great Britain he calls a balance of debt.

The qualifications of money, he maintains, are that it shall be stable in value, of convenient matter, current by common consent, and sanctioned by public authority. Money without intrinsic value, for which there is no demand elsewhere will not be exported. It is better, he says, to have silver on the footing of a commodity than of money,—apparently forgetting that he has already

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taken great pains to prove that money itself was a commodity. Bills are more convenient than silver. While gold and silver are used for foreign exchanges, there is no common consent as to the proportion of alloy. Every country must choose a special or local regulation of money as an instrument of commerce, and in this respect bills of credit are to be preferred. Government has made them a legal tender, and by common consent they are current.

His scheme for a bank is for a number of men to associate themselves together, emit bills, and agree to receive them as money. The undertakers are to furnish security that they will always receive the bills according to their tenor and are to be bound to the holders of the bills in a satisfactory manner. No undertaker is to take out over ten per cent. of the sum he subscribes, the balance to be loaned at six per cent. on good security, and payments to be made either in the bills of the bank or in silver at current market rates. He speaks of a variety of schemes lately proposed, and makes a special attack on the Silver Bank which had been inaugurated by the opponents of the Land Bank. He then proceeds to deal with Dr. Douglass’s pamphlets, taking them up and discussing them paragraph by paragraph.

The discussion in the press and in pamphlets was now directed to the advocacy of one or other of the two schemes, Land Bank and Silver Bank, which were seeking to secure the public favor. A pamphlet appeared in 1740 which praised the Land Bank scheme, giving a description of the manner in which it was founded, and laying stress upon the great numbers interested in its success.¹ The writer alleged that there would be no occasion to retire

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the notes annually paid in on the mortgages, because they would be perfectly good in the hands of possessors, and the company had promised to redeem them in commodities at the end of twenty years.

In the spring of 1741 still another pamphlet by Dr. Douglass appeared.¹ At the time when it was written news had been received that the Board of Trade upheld the governor and council in their attempts to check the projectors of the Land Bank, and that they were considering measures to put a stop to the scheme. The writer in caustic language points out the weakness of the scheme and shows why the Silver Bank is preferable. He says the projectors gave to the Land Bank, which he terms a bubble, the specious name of a bank. It has not the least affinity to banking. This sham bank, he adds, has no stock in the treasury; and the face of their bills promising to accept them for stock in the treasury, is an arrant bubble. In other countries, he says, the opulent, the honest, the men of credit have banks; here, the indigent, the debtors, the fraudulent set up for bankers. The managers spirit the people to mutiny, sedition, and riot. One gives it for law that no orders from the Boards at Whitehall, no acts of parliament, can put a stop to their proceedings.

This pamphlet brought forth a reply within a week from its publication.² The writer, in justifying the legality of the Land Bank bills, refers to a decision of the Privy Council in the case of the New Hampshire

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private bills, to the effect that they saw no reason for interfering with them. He denies the aspersions upon the character and standing of the subscribers to the Land Bank, and claims that the scheme as adopted is widely different from Coleman’s original proposition. He calls attention to the devotion of civil and military officers who have resigned their commissions, conscious of the justice of their cause, and alleges that whole troops, nay, almost whole regiments, either actually resigned, or informed their colonels when examined that they would resign, rather than not encourage the affair. The bills, he says, are in general use, notwithstanding the opposition to them.¹ No other, of whatever sort, with the like opposition, could have gained the like credit.

Douglass apparently felt that some answer was essential to the reply to his letter, and in the following month he issued a new attack on the Land Bank.² Continuing his argument that the subscribers belong to the debtor portion of the community, he states their declaration to the public to be substantially as follows: We have had a meeting and are combined and resolved to pay only so much on the pound, at a long forbearance, by a barefaced fraudulent contrivance. He repeats many of the points which he had already made and refers to rumors already current of disastrous speculations by the managers. Among them he specifies transactions in Nova Scotia wheat and the director’s logwood, bought and

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sold at a great discount upon their Land Bank bills. As to the New Hampshire Merchant’s notes, he says, they died a natural death in infancy, the signers and undertakers refusing to take them in payment.

The publication of Douglass’s Discourse led to the emission of a pamphlet in London in 1741, the object of which was to influence if possible parliamentary legislation against the paper money in use in the colonies.¹ The writer’s admiration for the author of the Discourse is so great, that he exclaims “Had I the power, the author should be invited to this Country against the next meeting of parliament.”²

In 1743, a pamphlet was issued reviewing the history of the currency emissions at length. The author was thoroughly familiar with his subject and had access to information as to many details now impossible to be obtained owing to the destruction of the Treasurer’s accounts. The student who cares to make a thorough investigation into the subject will derive much aid from the intelligent work of this author.³

This is probably the pamphlet which has figured in some of our catalogues, under the title “Thoughts upon the paper currency of New England.” The opening sentence of “An Enquiry,” etc, strongly suggests this conclusion. It is as follows: “According to my Promise I now send you my Thoughts upon the state of the Paper currency in New England, which for several

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years past has been the only general medium of its Trade” . . . . The copy in the Massachusetts Historical Society lacks the title page. A cataloguer would naturally assume that the missing title was “Thoughts,” etc.

A writer felt called upon in 1744, to enter the arena of discussion for the purpose of protesting against the inclusion of Massachusetts and Connecticut in the denunciations against Rhode Island which were caused by her contributions to the paper money of the province.¹ The pamphlet which he published has a postscript which winds up with an expression of doubt “whether the merchants bidding one upon another, in the purchasing of Bills of Exchange, Silver or Gold, is not as great a cause of the depreciating of our money, as the multiplied emission of paper bills.” This pamphlet has but little value, but it puts us upon track of a publication from which it quotes, entitled “Heads proposed for an Act of Parliament, to regulate and finally suppress Paper currencies in the Provinces and Colonies of Massachusetts Bay, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Rhode Island in New England in North America,” which was obviously from the pen of Dr. Douglass.

An attack upon the capitalists who were supposed to have speculated upon the necessities of the province and to have made money out of exchange as well as out of transactions in bills and in gold and silver, was published in 1750, and was followed by another in 1751, which in its title referred to the former pamphlet.²

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The pamphlet literature connected with the currency which had thus been stimulated by the Land Bank may be said to have closed with an account of the rise, progress, and consequences of the Land and Silver Banks, issued in 1744.¹ This consists of a carefully prepared historical resumé of the events connected with the rival banks, and is personal in its character only in its criticisms of Governor Belcher, whom the author charges with duplicity.

The consideration of the literature which has just been reviewed and the history of the discussion of public opinion in the province on the question of paper money and the bank schemes which were its outcome, are of necessity a part of our subject; but they are also of interest to the reader, in their relation to the general course of economic thought and economic history in the first half of the eighteenth century. The bank and paper money schemes are directly connected with the schemes then urged in England, Scotland, and France; the paper money theories are an echo of what the same generation was then, or had just been saying in the old countries. The most important contributions to the literature of economics which they yielded, are the writings of Douglass. His Essay concerning silver and paper currencies, and his Discourse concerning the currencies of the British Plantations in America, are by far

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the best of the attacks upon the wild notions of the bank advocates. His Summary, historical and political, of the first planting, progressive improvements, and present state of the British settlements in North America, gives tables showing the movement of silver, its effect on salaries, the amounts of bills outstanding at certain dates, and the correspondence between these amounts and the depreciation of silver, which are valuable contributions to economic history and show a keen appreciation of the causes of the disturbances in trade.

The only disputant on the other side who can lay claim to have fairly grappled with the question on the economic side, is the author of An inquiry into the nature and uses of money, who made an attempt to answer Douglass. These writers approach the matter in a quasi-scientific way, and their works are of value because through them we can trace the movements of exchange and its relation to the currency in circulation; yet the redundancy of their style, and the superfluity of their illustrations repel the reader. The common sense method in which such a writer as the author of The present melancholy circumstances of the province considered, who in 1719, declared that a thousand schemes for banks and paper money would not help the provincials so much as the importation of fewer goods, and the exercise on their part of greater self-reliance is not only more attractive now but must have been more effective with the average reader of that time.

The author of the second part of South Sea stock also approached the subject in an argumentative manner and displayed considerable power of analysis.

In concluding this review of the currency discussion, it may not be amiss to say a word as to the general position of Hutchinson, the historian, whose influence

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was so beneficially exerted in favor of the resumption of specie payments. Throughout the period of the discussion here under review, Hutchinson had been a consistent advocate of the doctrines which were finally to be accepted by the law-making power. Although his history was not written until some years after this time, the propositions which were laid down in it must be accepted as his constant and unshaken opinions. It is evident that they were not after-thoughts, and many of them are well worthy of attention. Speaking of silver and gold as instruments and measures of commerce, and the effect upon them of bills, he remarks that of two instruments, one in use in a particular state and the other with the whole commercial world, it is easy to determine which must leave that particular state and which remain. Referring to the proposition that the province should lend its bills, he suggests that this was an easy way of paying public charges, which, no doubt, they wondered that in so many ages the wisdom of other governments had never discovered. And he calls attention to the effect of depreciation of the currency in terms like these: by this sinking in value, though the nominal sum was higher than it had ever been before, yet the currency would produce no more sterling money than it would have done before the emissions were made. Hutchinson thus deserves to be remembered equally with Douglass among the advocates of the principles of a sound currency.

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