6362. PAPER MONEY, Gambling in.—
What do you think of this scrippomany?
Ships are lying idle at the wharves, buildings
are stopped, capital withdrawn from
commerce, manufactures, arts and agriculture,
to be employed in gambling, and the
tide of prosperity almost unparalleled in any
country, is arrested in its course, and suppressed
by the rage of getting rich in a day.
No mortal can tell where this will stop;
for the spirit of gaming, when once it has
seized a subject, is incurable. The tailor
who has made thousands in one day, though
he has lost them the next, can never again be
content with the slow and moderate earnings
of his needle. Nothing can exceed the public
felicity, if our papers are to be believed,
because our papers are under the orders of
the scripmen. I imagine, however, we shall
hear that all our cash has quitted the extremities
of the nation, and accumulated here [Philadelphia]; that produce and property fall
to half price there, and the same things rise to
double price here; that the cash accumulated
and stagnated here, as soon as the bank paper
gets out, will find its vent into foreign countries;
and instead of this solid medium, which
we might have kept for nothing, we shall have
a paper one, for the use of which we are to
pay these gamesters fifteen per cent. per annum,
as they say.—
To E. Rutledge. Washington ed. iii, 285.
Ford ed., v, 375.
(Pa.,
1791)
