From an original bill in the Harvard College copy of Phillips’ Hist. Sketches of Paper Currency. Fac-similes of bills of 1727 and 1742 are given in Smith’s Lit. and Hist. Curiosities, p. liii. Cf. also Potter’s Manchester.
NEW HAMPSHIRE THREE-POUNDS BILL, 1740.
From an original bill in the Harvard College copy of Phillips’ Hist. Sketches. There is a fac-simile of a N. H. bill of forty shillings in Gay’s Pop. Hist. U. S., iii. p. 133; and one of a bill of 1742-43 in Cassell’s Hist. United States, i. p. 486.
A fortunate plan for withdrawing the debased paper currency of Massachusetts Bay was finally matured.[416] Though the taking of Louisbourg had severely taxed the colony with a financial burden, the loss of it by treaty now made the way clear to throw off the same burden. William Bollan, the son-in-law of Shirley, had gone over after the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle to represent how the sacrifices of New England deserved more recognition than was seemingly paid them in the surrender of her conquest. This and other reasons prevailed, and the government agreed to reimburse the province for the cost of the siege. This was reckoned on the new basis of paper money. Shirley in 1743 had been allowed to give his assent to an issue called “new tenor,” in which the value to silver was about ten times as great as the enormous flood of issues then in circulation bore, and these last were now known as “old tenor.” On this new basis Louisbourg had cost £261,700, which was held to be equivalent to £183,600 in London, the pound sterling equalling now about 30 shillings of the new tenor, and £11 of the old.[417] This agreement had been reached in 1749,[418] and the specie was shipped to Boston. Two hundred and seventeen chests of Spanish dollars and a hundred casks of copper coin were carted up King Street, in September, the harbinger of new prosperity. It was due most to Thomas Hutchinson’s skilful urgency that the assembly, of which he was now speaker, was induced to devote this specie to the redeeming of the paper bills of the “old tenor,” of which £2,000,000 were in circulation.[419] It was agreed to pay about one pound in specie for ten in paper, and the commissioners closed their labors in 1751, the silver and copper already mentioned paying nine tenths of it, while a tax was laid to pay the remaining tenth. About £1,800,000 in current bills were presented; the rest had been destroyed or hid away and forgotten.[420] Rhode Island had received £6,322 as her share of the whole; but as she was not wise enough to apply it to the bettering of her currency, she suffered the evils of a depreciated paper longer than her neighbors.[421] The same lack of wisdom governed New Hampshire. Connecticut had always been conservative in her monetary practices.
When the Massachusetts Assembly, in 1754, sought to raise money for the expenses of the war then impending, its debate upon an inquisitorial excise bill levying a tax on wines and liquors incited violent opposition. Samuel Cooper launched at the plan a pamphlet called The Crisis.[422] Another brief attack appeared with nothing on the title but The Eclipse, MDCCLIV.[423] Daniel Fowle, however, was accused of printing another satirical account of the Representatives’ proceedings, which was published in 1754 as The Monster of Monsters, and the “Thomas Thumb, Esq.,” of the title is supposed to have shielded Samuel Waterhouse. Fowle was arrested, and the common hangman was directed to burn the pamphlet in King Street.[424] Sabin says that not more than three or four copies of the tract escaped, but the Brinley Catalogue shows two.[425] After his release Fowle printed in Boston the next year (1755) A total Eclipse of Liberty. Being a true and faithful account of the arraignment and examination of Daniel Fowle before the House of Representatives of Massachusetts Bay, Oct. 24, 1754, barely on suspicion of being concerned in printing and publishing a pamphlet, entitled The Monster of Monsters. Written by himself. An Appendix to the late Total Eclipse, etc., appeared in 1756.[426]
In May, 1755, a stamp act went into operation in the province, by which the Representatives had established duties upon vellum, parchment, and paper for two years. It yielded towards defraying the charges of the government about £1,350 for the years in question.[427] Shirley issued a proclamation of its conditions, one of which is in the Boston Public Library, and has been reprinted in its Bulletin, 1884, p. 163.
D. The Bounds of the New England Colonies.—During the provincial period, the external limits and internal divisions of New England were the subject of disagreement. The question as to what constituted the frontier line towards Acadia was constantly in dispute, as is explained elsewhere.[428]