e assembly.[130]

[Footnote 130: Hutchison.]

[Sidenote: Contest concerning the salary terminated.]

Thus was terminated, the stubborn contest concerning a permanent
salary for the governor. Its circumstances have been given more in
detail than consists with the general plan of this work, because it is
considered as exhibiting, in genuine colours, the character of the
people engaged in it. It is regarded as an early and an honourable
display of the same persevering temper in defence of principle, of the
same unconquerable spirit of liberty, which at a later day, and on a
more important question, tore the British colonies from a country to
which they had been strongly attached.

{1733}

The immense quantity of depreciated paper which was in circulation
throughout New England, had no tendency to diminish the complaints of
the scarcity of money. Massachusetts and New Hampshire were restrained
from farther emissions by the instructions to their governors, who
received their appointments from the crown. Connecticut, engaged
chiefly in agricultural pursuits, suffered less from this depreciated
medium than her neighbours, and was less disposed to increase its
evils. Rhode Island, equally commercial with Massachusetts, and
equally fond of paper, chose her own governor, and might therefore
indulge, without restraint, her passion for a system alike
unfavourable to morals and to industry. That colony now issued one
hundred thousand pounds on loan, to its inhabitants, for twenty years.
The merchants of Boston, apprehensive that this capital would transfer
the stock of Massachusetts to Rhode Island, associated against
receiving the new emission; and many of them formed a company which
issued one hundred and ten thousand pounds, redeemable with specie, in
ten years, a tenth part annually, at the then current value of paper.
The association against receiving the new emission of Rhode Island was
not long observed; and the bills of New Hampshire and Connecticut were
also current. Silver immediately rose to twenty-seven shillings the
ounce, and the notes issued by the merchants soon disappeared, leaving
in circulation only the government paper.

{1739}

Great uneasiness prevailed through Massachusetts on this subject. The
last instalment of the bills would become due in 1741, and no power
existed to redeem them by new emissions. Serious consequences were
apprehended from calling in the circulating medium without
substituti