,
"that I will consent to load my constituents with taxes when we can send
to the printer and get a wagon load of money, one quire of which will
pay for the whole?"

=Paper Money and Loans.=--Acting on this curious but appealing political
economy, Congress issued in June, 1776, two million dollars in bills of
credit to be redeemed by the states on the basis of their respective
populations. Other issues followed in quick succession. In all about
$241,000,000 of continental paper was printed, to which the several
states added nearly $210,000,000 of their own notes. Then came
interest-bearing bonds in ever increasing quantities. Several millions
were also borrowed from France and small sums from Holland and Spain. In
desperation a national lottery was held, producing meager results. The
property of Tories was confiscated and sold, bringing in about
$16,000,000. Begging letters were sent to the states asking them to
raise revenues for the continental treasury, but the states, burdened
with their own affairs, gave little heed.

=Inflation and Depreciation.=--As paper money flowed from the press, it
rapidly declined in purchasing power until in 1779 a dollar was worth
only two or three cents in gold or silver. Attempts were made by
Congress and the states to compel people to accept the notes at face
value; but these were like attempts to make water flow uphill.
Speculators collected at once to fatten on the calamities of the
republic. Fortunes were made and lost gambling on the prices of public
securities while the patriot army, half clothed, was freezing at Valley
Forge. "Speculation, peculation, engrossing, forestalling," exclaimed
Washington, "afford too many melancholy proofs of the decay of public
virtue. Nothing, I am convinced, but the depreciation of our currency
... aided by stock jobbing and party dissensions has fed the hopes of
the enemy."

=The Patriot Financiers.=--To the efforts of Congress in financing the
war were added the labors of private citizens. Hayn Solomon, a merchant
of Philadelphia, supplied members of Congress, including Madison,
Jefferson, and Monroe, and army officers, like Lee and Steuben, with
money for their daily needs. All together he contributed the huge sum of
half a million dollars to the American cause and died broken in purse,
if not in spirit, a British prisoner of war. Another Philadelphia
merchant, Robert Morris, won for himself the name of the "patriot
financier" because he labo