ding minds in the different Colonies. All felt that the
success of the experiment must chiefly depend upon the degree of
security that could be given to the bills. But how to reach that
necessary degree was a perplexing question. Three ways were suggested in
the New-York Convention: that Congress should fix upon a sum, assign
each Colony its proportion, and the issue be made by the Colony upon its
own responsibility; or that the United Colonies should make the issue,
each Colony pledging itself to redeem the part that fell to it; or,
lastly, that, Congress issuing the sum, and each Colony assuming its
proportionate responsibility, the Colonies should still be bound as a
whole to make up for the failure of any individual Colony to redeem its
share. The latter was proposed by the Convention as offering greater
chances of security, and tending at the same time to strengthen the bond
of union. It was in nearly this form, also, that it came from Congress.

No time was now lost in carrying the resolution into effect. The next
day, Tuesday, June 23, the number, denomination, and form of the bills
were decided in a Committee of the Whole. It was resolved to make bills
of eight denominations, from one to eight, and issue forty-nine thousand
of each, completing the two millions by eleven thousand eight hundred of
twenty dollars each. The form of the bill was to be,--

_Continental Currency._

_No. Dollars._

_This bill entitles the bearer to receive ---- Spanish milled
dollars or the value thereof in gold or silver, according to
the resolutions of the Congress held at Philadelphia on the
10th day of May_, A. D. 1775.

In the same sitting a committee of five was appointed "to get proper
plates engraved, to provide paper, and to agree with printers to print
the above bills." Both Franklin and John Adams were on this committee.

Had they lived in 1862 instead of 1775, how their doors would have been
beset by engravers and paper-dealers and printers! What baskets of
letters would have been poured upon their tables! How would they have
dreaded the sound of the knocker or the cry of the postman! But, alas!
paper was so far from abundant that generals were often reduced to hard
straits for enough of it to write their reports and despatches on; and
that Congressmen were not much better off will be believed when we find
John Adams sending his wife a sheet or two at a time under the same
envelope with hi