to the sums he subscribed and took out, or to give bond with two sureties, but personal security was not to be taken for more than Iool. from any one person. Ten directors and a treasurer were to be chosen by the company. Every subscriber or partner was to pay three per cent. interest for the sum taken out, and five per cent. of the principal; and he that did not pay bills might pay the produce and manufacture of the Province at such rates as the directors from time to time should set, and they should commonly pass in lawful money. The pretence was that, by thus furnishing a medium and instrument of trade, not only the inhabitants in general would be better able to procure the Province bills of credit for their taxes, but trade, foreign and inland, would revive and flourish. The fate of the project was thought to depend upon the opinion which the general court should form of it. It was necessary therefore to have a house of representatives well disposed. Besides the eight hundred persons subscribers, the needy part of the Province in general favoured the scheme. One of their votes will go as far in popular elections as one of the most opulent. The former are most numerous, and it appeared that by far the majority of the representatives for 1740 were subscribers to or favourers of the scheme, and they have ever since been distinguished by the name of the land bank house. Men of estates and the principal merchants in the Province abhorred the project and refused to receive the bills, but great numbers of shop-keepers, who had lived for a long time before upon the fraud of a depreciating currency, and many small traders, gave credit to the bills. The directors, it was said, by a vote of the company, became traders, and issued just what bills they thought proper without any fund or security for their ever being redeemed. They purchased every sort of commodity, ever so much a drug, for the sake of pushing off their bills, and by one means or other a large sum, perhaps fifty or sixty thousand pounds, was abroad. To lessen the temptation to receive the bills, a company of merchants agreed to issue their notes, or bills redeemable by silver and gold at distant periods, much like the scheme in 1733, and attended with no better effect. The governor exerted himself to blast this fraudulent undertaking, the land bank. Not only such civil and military officers as were directors or partners, but all who received or paid any of the bills, were displaced. The governor negatived the person chosen speaker of the house, being a director of the bank, and afterwards negatived thirteen of the new-elected counsellors who were directors or partners in or reputed favourers of the scheme. But all was insufficient to suppress it. Perhaps the major part, in number, of the inhabitants of the Province, openly or secretly were well-wishers to it. One of the directors afterwards acknowledged to me, that although he entered into the company with a view to the public interest, yet when he found what power and influence they had in all public concerns, he was convinced it was more than belonged to them, more than they could make a good use of, and therefore unwarrantable. Many of the most sensible discreet persons in the Province saw a general confusion at hand. The authority of parliament to control all public and private persons and proceedings in the colonies was, in that day, questioned by nobody. Application was therefore made to parliament for an act to suppress the company, which, notwithstanding the opposition made by their agent, was very easily obtained, and therein it was declared that the act of the 6th of king George I. chapter the eighteenth, did, does and shall extend to the colonies and plantations in America. It was said the act of George I. when it passed, had no relation to America, but another act twenty years after gave it a force even from the passing it, which it never could have had without. This was said to be an instance of the transcendent power of parliament. Although the company was dissolved, yet the act of parliament gave the possessors of the bills a right of action against every partner or director for the sums expressed with interest. The company were in a maze. At a general meeting some, it was said, were for running all hazards, although the act subjected them to a præmunire, but the directors had more prudence, and advised them to declare that they considered themselves dissolved, and met only to consult upon some method of redeeming their bills from the possessors, which every man engaged to endeavour in proportion to his interest, and to pay in to the directors or some of them to burn or destroy. Had the company issued their bills at the value expressed in the face of them, they would have had no reason to complain of being obliged to redeem them at the same rate; but as this was not the case in general, and many of the possessors of the bills had acquired them for half their value, as expressed, equity could not be done, and so far as respected the company, perhaps, the parliament was not very anxious, the loss they sustained being but a just penalty for their unwarrantable undertaking if it had been properly applied. Had not the parliament interposed, the Province would have been in the utmost confusion, and the authority of government entirely in the land bank company. C. The Necessity of Paper Money in the Colonies, 17641 The stoppage of the trade with the Spanish West Indies by the enforcement of the navigation acts cut off from the British colonies in America their chief source of silver, while they were drained of their existing supply by an adverse balance of trade with England. This was urged by many as an argument for the emission of paper money by the colonies, and is so used by ex-Governor Pownall in the extract here given. The British American Colonies have not, within themselves, the means of making money or coin. They cannot acquire it from Great Britain; the balance of trade being against them. The returns of those branches of commerce, in which they are permitted to trade to any other part of Europe, are but barely sufficient to pay this balance. By the present act of navigation, they are prohibited from trading with the Colonies of any other nations: so that there remains nothing but a small branch of African trade, and the scrambling profits of an undescribed traffic, to supply them with silver. However, matters have been so managed, that the general currency of the Colonies, used to be in Spanish and Portugese coin. This supplied the internal circulation of their home business, and always finally came to England, in payments for what the Colonists exported from hence. If the act of navigation should be carried into such rigorous execution, as to cut off this supply of a silver currency to the Colonies; the thoughts of administration should be turned to the devising some means, of supplying the Colonies with money of some sort or other: . The remedy lies in a certain address in carrying in execution the act of navigation - but if that remedy is neglected; the next recourse must lie in some means of maintaining a currency specially appropriated to the Colonies; and must be partly, such as will keep a certain quantity of silver coin in circulation there and partly, such as shall establish a paper currency, holding a value nearly equal to silver. ... In Colonies, the essence of whose nature requires a progressive increase of settlements and trade, and yet who from the balance of trade with the mother country, being against them, must suffer a constantly decreasing quantity of silver money; a certain quantity of paper-money, is necessary. It is necessary, to keep up the increasing operations of this trade, and the settlements: it is also necessary, in such circumstances, to the equal distribution and general applica1 Administration of the British Colonies. By Thomas Pownall (5th edition, London, 1774), I, 180-1, 186, 194. tion of these benefits to the whole Colony: which benefits would otherwise become a monopoly to the monied merchant only: it is prudent, and of good policy in the mother coun ry to permit it, as it is the surest means of drawing the balance of the Colony trade and culture, to its own profit. III. RETAIL TRADE Market at Philadelphia, 17481 Markets and fairs were still of general use in the middle of the eighteenth century in bringing buyers and sellers together. The market at Philadelphia was probably the most important of its kind in America, and served a very useful purpose. But it is much to be feared that the trade of Philadelphia, and of all the English colonies, will rather decrease than increase, in case no provision is made to prevent it. I shall hereafter plainly shew upon what foundation this decrease of trade is likely to take place. The town not only furnishes most of the inhabitants of Pensylvania with the goods which they want, but numbers of the inhabitants of New Jersey come every day and carry on a great trade. The town has two great fairs every year; one in May, and the other in November, both on the sixteenth days of those two months. But besides these fairs, there are every week two market days, viz, Wednesday and Saturday. On those days the country people of Pensylvania and New Jersey bring to town a quantity of victuals, and other productions of the country, and this is a great advantage to the town. It is therefore to be wished that the like regulation might be made in our Swedish towns. You are sure to meet with every produce of the season, which the country affords, on the market-days. But on other days they are in vain sought for. Provisions are always to be got fresh here, and for that reason most of the inhabitants never buy more at a time than what will be sufficient till the next market-day. In summer there is a market almost every day; for the victuals do not keep well in the great heat. There are two places in the town where these markets are kept; but that near the court-house is the principal. It begins about four or five o'clock in the morning, and ends about nine o'clock in the forenoon. The town is not enclosed, and has no other custom-house than the great one for the ships. . . 1 Travels into North America. By Peter Kalm (London, 1771). In Pinkerton, Voyages and Travels, XIII, 394-5. The country people come to market in New York twice a week, much in the same manner as they do at Philadelphia; with this difference, that the markets are here kept in several places. POPULATION I. GROWTH OF THE POPULATION A. The Increase of Mankind, 17551 The rapid increase of the population in a new country like the American colonies, where land was plentiful and marriages early, was the subject of comment by more than one observer. No one has stated the case more scientifically than Franklin. 6. Land being thus plenty in America, and so cheap as that a labouring Man, that understands Husbandry, can in a short Time save Money enough to purchase a Piece of new Land sufficient for a Plantation, whereon he may subsist a Family; such are not afraid to marry; for if they even look far enough forward to consider how their Children when grown up are to be provided for, they see that more Land is to be had at Rates equally easy, all Circumstances considered. 7. Hence Marriages in America are more general, and more generally early, than in Europe. And if it is reckoned there, that there is but one Marriage per annum among 100 Persons, perhaps we may here reckon two; and if in Europe they have but four Births to a Marriage (many of their Marriages being late) we may here reckon eight, of which if one half grow up, and our Marriages are made, reckoning one with another at twenty Years of Age, our People must at least be doubled every twenty Years. 8. But notwithstanding this Increase, so vast is the Territory of North-America, that it will require many Ages to settle it fully; and till it is fully settled, Labour will never be cheap here, where no Man continues long a Labourer for others, but gets a Plantation of his own, no Man continues long a Journeyman to a Trade, bu goes among those new Settlers, and sets up for himself, &c. Henc Labour is no cheaper now, in Pensylvania, than it was thirty Years ago, tho' so many Thousand labouring People have been imported. . . . 21. The Importation of Foreigners into a Country that has as many Inhabitants as the present Employments and Provisions fo Subsistence will bear, will be in the End no Increase of People, unles 1 Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind and the Peopling of Countries By Benjamin Franklin (Boston, 1755), 44-5, 51-4. Also in Works (Sparks edi tion, Boston, 1840), II, 312-4. |