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, that at the end of the war, it was to grow into gold and
silver, or become equal thereto, was to suppose that we were to _get_
two hundred millions of dollars by _going to war_, instead of _paying_
the cost of carrying it on.

But if any thing in the situation of America, as to her currency or