I shall endeavour to give your Lordships entire satisfaction as to that
part of your Letter with regard to the present state of our Paper
Currency and Publick Orders. You are pleased to say that the Report
which I formerly transmitted differs from an Account which you have had
prepared for your use, and you desire that I may explain the reason of
their differing. I have compared the two States and I cannot perceive
the least difference, except that the Account sent from hence descends
lower in point of time, and consequently comprehends more of the Publick
Orders that have been cancelled than the account that has been prepared
for Your Lordships in London neither does that account seem to take any
notice of the Publick Orders issued in consequence of an Act passed on
the 20th of August 1731 the Committee I presume thought it
necessary to be particular as to the different Periods at which the
several Sums of the legal Currency were issued, some part having been
cancelled, that have only said in general that the Sum of £106,500
amounting to £15,214: 5: 8 1/2 Sterling in the Year 1731, and being
of the same value at present, is still outstanding, and your Lordships
take notice that your state of these Bills
of Credit agrees exactly with that sent from hence, and that in
the year 1739 there remained then outstanding without any funds for
calling it is precisely the same Sum of £106,500 Currency. And the
reason I presume that took notice of the Publick Orders issued in 1731
and the £63000 orders issued in 1742, in the body of the Account, was
because that some small part of them was still uncancelled But your
Lordships may perceive by the printed account then sent over, and which
I now again transmit, that on the 5
th of March 1736 there was
issued the sum of £35,010, which agrees with the 1
st
Article in Your Lordships State of the Publick Orders, that on the
5
th of April 1740 there was issued £25,000 which agrees
with the second Article and by an Additional Act on the 19
th
of Sept the same year there was issued £11,508 agreeable to your
third Article, the Sum of £63,000 issued in 1742, which makes the
4
th Article of Your Lordships State, is contained above in
the body of the Account, as some part of it is still uncancelled, and in
May 1740 £20,000 was issued, which is the 5
th Article
taken notice of by Your Lordships. Those several Sums in the Committees
State (Exclusive of the Orders of 1731) make together the Sum of £150,
518, and Your Lordships may be assured
that as much was then sunk as is set forth in that Report, and
that since that Report was made there have also been cancelled above
£1000 of the Publick Orders of 1731 and £12,600 of the £63,000
Orders for the Year 1749 and 1750, So that all the Publick Orders that
have ever been issued from the beginning of the Government to this time,
there remains uncancelled no more than £12,600 Currency, which is not
£2000 Sterling, Except about £50 Sterling of the Orders of 1731,
and a few of the Orders in 1740, which I presume have been lost or
accidently destroyed, for I see none circulating, and for Exchanging of
which should they appear, there is equal Sums of legal Currency lock'd
up in the Publick Treasury, and except also £12,600 of the £63,000
Orders which will be sunk by the two succeeding Taxes.
Your Lordships are pleased to say that if we are a New and improving
Province, and if our Exported Produce sufficiently pays for all our
Importations from Great Britain, and leaves a Surplus in our favour of
several thousand pounds Sterling Annually as I have asserted, it is the
best proof that we want not a proper Currency, which is only necessary
to a People who have not that Ballance in their favour. I would be highly
indecent in me to enter into any dispute with
your Lordships, and were there no indecency on it I should in
prudence decline it. To set weakness in Competition with acknowledged
abilities is to betray ones own Cause. But I hope your Lordships will
permit me to explain my meaning in what I wrote last upon this Subject
being as I apprehend misunderstood.
If the Goods that are imported into this Province from Great Britain
be to the Amount of One hundred and twenty thousand pound Sterling
yearly, and if our Exported Produce be of the value of £150,000 there
will then remain a Ballance of £30,000 in our favour which no doubt
we may drawn [sic.] from Great Britain in Gold or Silver, but those to
whom this Ballance is due will consider what use this may be put to.
Land is of little or no value, and consequently no man can increase his
Estate by Purchases that way. if it is lent out upon Interest it yields
but 8 p Cent, and considering the Risques and other accidents few see
above six, whereas when the money is invested in Slaves, they may
reasonably expect above 16 20, and 25 p Ct when Rice gives a tolerable
Price, for the usual computation is that they pay for themselves with
their labour in four or five Years. Now My Lords I shall suppose the
Goods from Great Britain
are all paid for with our Produce, and upon casting up the
Account a Ballance is found due to us of £30,000 and at that Period
of time Ships Arrive from the Coast of Guinea with 2,000 Negroes on
board. This has been of the case, and sometimes 2000 have been Imported
but these 2,000 Negroes at the prices they are commonly should for are
worth £40,000. Your Lordships will easily perceive then while this
continues to be the Case, there can no Gold or Silver ever remain with
us, and yet we are not growing poorer but are every day adding to our
Wealth, for these Slaves are real Riches, as much as the particular
Species of gold or Silver. Your Lordships are pleased to say that you
are at a loss to discover my meaning when I say it would be imprudent in
the Province to buy Gold and Silver with our Ballance, I there talk of
gold and Silver as a Commodity which we purchase with our Produce, as we
do Goods from Great Britain, or Slaves from Guinea, and when Your
Lordships have considered the above state of our Trade, I hope you will
find no Impropriety in the expression, As for Trade or Barter with other
Nations, which you mention, We have none, The triffling Traffick that we
had at S
t Augustine being at an end.
Your Lordships are also pleased to express a
very great surprize at an expression in my Letter that we have
for many years kept the Publick Faith, because as you alledge, every
Currency Bill from 1703 to this day, has a Clause for cancelling the
money issued which has never once been performed according to Law. Your
Lordships surely know that no paper Currency whatever has been issued in
this Province for this nine and twenty or thirty Years past, at least
such as could be legally tendered for Debt, and tho I am no stranger to
what was done by others many years before my Arrival yet I am a stranger
to their Guilt, and am no way answerable for it, and Your Lordships are
to Just to involve me in it.
I arrived here in the year 1743 and there being no fund for sinking
of what is called our Lawful paper money, I applyed my self with
dilligence and steadiness to pay off and Cancel the Public Orders, and I
found a very great Load of these, for which the Public Faith was
engaged, but I found also a great reluctance against paying them off,
and an incurable desire to have more issued. I shall state to Your
Lordships what Sums have been cancelled in my time, it may differ from
the Report of the Committee which was formed
from the Laws imposing
Taxes for that purpose, but it is sometimes a year or two after
Laws pass before the Taxes are levied or paid into the Treasury, and the
money sometimes lies longer before it is applyed, however in the Years
1745, 1748, & 1749 there was cancelled of the Publick Orders of 1731
the Sum of £20,260 and there has been above £1000 cancelled since
of the Publick Orders of 1736, the 15
th of May 1744
£8192, the 12
th of June 1747 £8098..10. the
8
th of June 1748 £6068 the 29
th of November 1749 £2440 of the £63000 Orders of
1742 there have been paid eight years at the Rate of £6300 yearly,
extending to £50,400 and the Orders of 1745 amounting to £20,000,
these several Sums extending in the whole to £129,044..10 have been
paid during my time.
I hope therefore your Lordships will permit me to say that the Public
Faith has been punctually kept since my arrival, which was several years
agoe, perhaps the Province is not much to be praised for it, and
therefore I leave it to Your Lordships to give praise to whom it may be
due, for I have been as much press'd as any Governour in America was, to
conive at a temporary suspension of these Laws for sinking
these Sums and to have issued more paper money; and the
Situation of this Frontier Province left in the time of War without a
single Ship to defend our Trade and extensive Coast from the
neighbouring French and Spanish Settlements then our Enemies, and their
Privateers, or from the Attempts of their Indians upon our backs and the
low price of our Produce furnished but too plausible a pretence for
issuing large Sums, but I stood singly against it, altho I was earnestly
pressed by every Member of the Council and Assembly and I may say, by
every individual Person in the Province and I am ashamed to let Your
Lordships know some of the Arguments made use of by some of the Assembly
to persuade me to these measures; some of their best Speakers came to me
in the Name of the rest, and begged of me with great vehemence and with
the offers of large Sums of money, to give way to their proposals. That
the money offered me would be raised under Collour of Reimbursing me my
Expences amongst the Indians, and other Expences that they said they had
no other method of Repaying, but I not only rejected their Offers, with
great Indignation, but refused to comply with desires even when they had
afterwards moderated them to £40,000 for the payment of
the Sloops. I begged of them for their own sakes to consider
the distress that had been brought upon other Province by such measures.
That it was an increasing Evil and the more it was used the more it
would be wanted, that steadiness was the only Security against it for
that admitting a little more and a little more would like the opening a
Flood Gate, overwhelm us with an Inundation of paper money. These
Arguments I used with them against any new Issue of paper money, and
they raised the Sum without it, but it is my Duty to speak another
Language to Your Lordships, while I am convinced that some sum in paper
money under proper regulations, in the present Situation of our
Trade, might be useful (for I will not say absolutely necessary) to us.
