I have several times made remarks on the paper-currency of the province,
which the planters were always for increasing, and the merchants and
money lenders for sinking. The exchange of London, like a commercial
thermometer, served to measure the rise or fall of paper-credit in
Carolina; and the price of bills of exchange commonly ascertained the
value of their current money. The permanent riches of the country
consisted in lands, houses, and negroes; and the produce of the lands,
improved by negroes, raw materials, provisions, and naval stores, were
exchanged for what the province wanted from other countries. The
attention of the mercantile part was chiefly employed about staple
commodities; and as their great object was present profit it was natural
for them to be governed by that great axiom in trade, whoever brings
commodities cheapest and in the best order to market, must always meet
with the greatest encouragement and success. The planters, on the other
hand, attended to the balance of trade, which was turned in their favour,
and concluded, that when the exports of any province exceeded its
imports, whatever losses private persons might now and then sustain, yet
that province upon the whole was growing rich. Let us suppose, what was
indeed far from being the case, that Georgia so far advanced in
improvement as to rival Carolina in raw materials, and exchangeable
commodities, and to undersell her at the markets in Europe: This
advantage could only arise from the superior quality of her lands, the
cheapness of her labour, or her landed men being contented with smaller
profits. In such a case it was the business of the Carolina merchants to
lower the price of her commodities, in order to reap the same advantages
with her neighbours; and this could only be done by reducing the quantity
of paper-money in circulation. If gold and silver only past current in
Georgia, which by general consent was the medium of commerce throughout
the world, if she had a sufficient quantity of them to answer the
purposes of trade, and no paper-currency had been permitted to pass