current; in such case her commodities would bring their full value at the
provincial market, and no more, according to the general standard of
money in Europe. Supposing also that Carolina had a quantity of gold and
silver in circulation, sufficient for the purposes of commerce, and that
the planters, in order to raise the value of their produce, should issue
paper-money equal to the quantity of gold and silver in circulation, the
consequence would be, the price of labour, and of all articles of
exportation would be doubled. But as the markets of Europe remained the
same, and her commodities being of the same kind and quality with those
of Georgia, they would not bring an higher price. Some persons must be
losers, and in the fist instance this loss must fall on the mercantile
interest, and moneyed men. Therefore this superabundance of paper-credit,
on whose foundation the deluded province built its visionary fabric of
great wealth, was not only useless, but prejudicial with respect to the
community. Paper-money in such large quantities is the bane of commerce,
a kind of fictitious wealth, making men by high founding language imagine
they are worth thousands and millions, while a ship's load of it would
not procure for the country a regiment of auxiliary troops in time of
war, nor a suit of clothes at an European market in time of peace. Had
America, from its first settlement, prohibited paper-money altogether,
her staple commodities must have brought her, in the course of commerce,
vast sums of gold and silver, which would have circulated through the
continent, and answered all the purposes of trade both foreign and
domestic. It is true the value of gold and silver is equally nominal, and
rises and falls like the value of other articles of commerce, in
proportion to the quantity in circulation. But as nations in general have
fixed on these metals as the medium of trade, this has served to stamp a
value on them, and render them the means not only of procuring every
where the necessaries of life, but by supporting public credit, the chief
means also of national protection.