minister a valid
contract for the annual payment, by the former to the latter, of
that particular quantity of tobacco,--the clergy to take their
chances as to the market value of the product from year to year.

Thus matters ran on until 1755, when, by reason of a diminished crop
of tobacco, the legislature passed an option law,[36] virtually
suspending for the next ten months the Act of 1748, and requiring the
clergy, at the option of the vestries, to receive their salaries for
that year, not in tobacco, but in the depreciated paper currency of
the colony, at the rate of two pence for each pound of tobacco due,--a
price somewhat below the market value of the article for that year.
Most clearly this act, which struck an arbitrary blow at the validity
of all contracts in Virginia, was one which exceeded the
constitutional authority of the legislature; since it suspended,
without the royal approval, a law which had been regularly ratified by
the king. However, the operation of this act was shrewdly limited to
ten months,--a period just long enough to accomplish its object, but
too short for the royal intervention against it to be of any direct
avail. Under these circumstances, the clergy bore their losses for
that year with some murmuring indeed, but without any formal
protest.[37]

Just three years afterward, in 1758, the legislature, with even less
excuse than before, passed an act[38] similar to that of 1755,--its
force, however, being limited to twelve months. The operation of this
act, as affecting each parish minister, may be conveyed in very few
words. In lieu of what was due him under the law for his year's
services, namely, 16,000 pounds of tobacco, the market value of which
for the year in question proved to be about L400 sterling, it
compelled him to take, in the paper money of the colony, the sum of
about L133. To make matters still worse, while the tobacco which was
due him was an instant and an advantageous medium of exchange
everywhere, and especially in England whence nearly all his merchant
supplies were obtained, this paper money that was forced upon him was
a depreciated currency even within the colony, and absolutely
worthless outside of it; so that the poor parson, who could never
demand his salary for any year until six full months after its close,
would have proffered to him, at the end, perhaps, of another six
months, just one third of the nominal sum due him, and that in a
species of money of no