Now, as it would have taken ten or twelve millions sterling of taxes, to carry on the war for five years, and, as while this money was issuing and likewise depreciating down to nothing, there were none, or very few valuable taxes paid; consequently the event to the public was the same, whether they sunk ten or twelve millions of expended money, by depreciation, or paid ten or twelve millions by taxation; for as they did not do both, and chose to do one, the matter, in a general view, was indifferent.  And therefore, what the Abbe supposes to be a debt, has now no existence; it having been paid, by every body consenting to reduce it, at his own expence, from the value of the bills continually passing among themselves, a sum, equal to nearly what the expence of the war was for five years.

Again.—­The paper money having now ceased, and the depreciation with it, and gold and silver supplied its place, the war will now be carried on by taxation, which will draw from the public a considerable less sum than what the depreciation drew; but as, while they pay the former, they do not suffer the latter, and as, when they suffered the latter, they did not pay the former, the thing will be nearly equal, with this moral advantage, that taxation occasions frugality and 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.