From an original bill in an illustrated copy of Historical Sketches of the Paper Currency of the American Colonies, by Henry Phillips, Jr., Roxbury, 1865,—in Harvard College library.
In 1733, Boston instructed its treasurer to refuse the bills of the new emission of Rhode Island. (Records, 1729-42, p. 53.)
The favoring and the opposing of the popular measure of the Land-bank drew lines sharply in the current political contests. The governor was suspected of double dealing, and while he was believed to be personally interested in it, he carried out openly the opposition which the Board of Trade instructed him to pursue: rejected the speaker and committees of the House, who were urging its progress, and displaced justices and militia officers of that way of thinking. All the while rumors of riot began to prevail, but they were not sufficient to coerce the government in a relaxation of their opposition; and the governor on his side carried espionage to a degree which was novel. It is said that something over £50,000 of the bank’s bills actually got out; but some one discovered that an old act of Parliament, which came of the explosion of the South Sea company, held each partner responsible, and nothing else was needed to push the adventure out of existence.[411]
Felt gives the main points in the development of this financial scheme, but here as elsewhere his book is a mere conglomerate of ill-digested items, referring largely to the five volumes (c.-civ.) of the Mass. Archives, marked “Pecuniary,” which cover the monetary movements in Massachusetts between 1629 and 1775. Among the Shelburne Papers, vol. 61,[412] there appears a report of the attorney general to the Lords of Trade on this scheme of erecting a Land-bank in Boston, dated Nov. 10, 1735.
RHODE ISLAND THREE-SHILLINGS BILL, 1738.
From an original bill in the Harvard College copy of Phillips’ Hist. Sketches.
A leading combatant in the wordy conflict which followed was the Scotch physician, William Douglass, then living in Boston. His first publication was Some observations on the scheme projected for emitting £60,000 in bills of a new tenor to be redeemed with silver and gold, Boston, 1738.[413] In the same year he published without date, An Essay concerning silver and paper currencies, more especially with regard to the British colonies in New England, Boston.[414] He next printed in London in 1739 a Discourse concerning the currencies of the British plantations in America, especially with regard to their paper money, more particularly in relation to Massachusetts.[415]
NEW HAMPSHIRE FIVE-SHILLINGS BILL, 1737.