consequently the event to the public was
the same, whether they sunk ten or twelve millions of expended money,
by depreciation, or paid ten or twelve millions by taxation; for as
they did not do both, and chose to do one, the matter, in a general
view, was indifferent. And therefore, what the Abbe supposes to be a
debt, has now no existence; it having been paid, by every body
consenting to reduce it, at his own expence, from the value of the
bills continually passing among themselves, a sum, equal to nearly
what the expence of the war was for five years.

Again.--The paper money having now ceased, and the depreciation with
it, and gold and silver supplied its place, the war will now be
carried on by taxation, which will draw from the public a considerable
less sum than what the depreciation drew; but as, while they pay the
former, they do not suffer the latter, and as, when they suffered the
latter, they did not pay the former, the thing will be nearly equal,
with this moral advantage, that taxation occasions frugality and
thought, and depreciation produced dissipation and carelessness.

And again.--If a man's portion of taxes comes to less than what he
lost by the depreciation, it proves the alteration is in his favour.
If it comes to more, and he is justly assessed, it shews that he did
not sustain his proper share of depreciation, because the one was as
operatively his tax as the other.

It is true, that it never was intended, neither was it foreseen, that
the debt contained in the paper currency should sink itself in this
manner; but as by the voluntary conduct of all and of everyone it has
arrived at this fate, the debt is paid by those who owed it. Perhaps
nothing was ever so much the act of a country as this. Government had
no hand in it. Every man depreciated his own money by his own consent,
for such was the effect which the raising of the nominal value of
goods produced. But as by such reduction he sustained a loss equal to
what he must have paid to sink it by taxation; therefore the line of
justice is to consider his loss by the depreciation as his tax for
that time, and not to tax him when the war is over, to make that money
good in any other person's hands, which became nothing in his own.

Again.--The paper currency was issued for the express purpose of
carrying on the war. It has performed that service, without any other
material change to the public, while it lasted. But to suppose, as
some did, tha