tances the payment of debts and taxes
was out of the question; and as the same state of things made creditors
clamorous and ugly, the courts were crowded with lawsuits. The lawyers
usually contrived to get their money by exacting retainers in advance,
and the practice of champerty was common, whereby the lawyer did his
work in consideration of a percentage on the sum which was at last
forcibly collected. Homesteads were sold for the payment of foreclosed
mortgages, cattle were seized in distrainer, and the farmer himself was
sent to jail. The smouldering fires of wrath thus kindled found
expression in curses aimed at lawyers, judges, and merchants. The wicked
merchants bought foreign goods and drained the state of specie to pay
for them, while they drank Madeira wine and dressed their wives in fine
velvets and laces. So said the farmers; and city ladies, far kinder than
these railers deemed them, formed clubs, of which the members pledged
themselves to wear homespun,--a poor palliative for the deep-seated ills
of the time. In such mood were many of the villagers when in the summer
of 1786 they were overtaken by the craze for paper money. At the meeting
of the legislature in May, a petition came in from Bristol County,
praying for an issue of paper. The petitioners admitted that such money
was sure to deteriorate in value, and they doubted the wisdom of trying
to keep it up by forcing acts. Instead of this they would have the rate
of its deterioration regulated by law, so that a dollar might be worth
ninety cents to-day, and presently seventy cents, and by and by fifty
cents, and so on till it should go down to zero and be thrown overboard.
People would thus know what to expect, and it would be all right. The
delicious _naivete_ of this argument did not prevail with the
legislature of Massachusetts, and soft money was frowned down by a vote
of ninety-nine to nineteen. Then a bill was brought in seeking to
reestablish in legislation the ancient practice of barter, and make
horses and cows legal tender for debts; and this bill was crushed by
eighty-nine votes against thirty-five. At the same time this legislature
passed a bill to strengthen the federal government by a grant of
supplementary funds to Congress, and thus laid a further burden of taxes
upon the people.

There was an outburst of popular wrath. A convention at Hatfield in
August decided that the court of common pleas ought to be abolished,
that no funds should b