Страница 870 из 2651

It bears the evident marks of having originally been, what the

honest and downright Doctor Douglas assures us it was, a scheme

of fraudulent debtors to cheat their creditors. The government of

Pennsylvania, indeed, pretended, upon their first emission of

paper money, in 1722, to render their paper of equal value with

gold and silver, by enacting penalties against all those who made

any difference in the price of their goods when they sold them

for a colony paper, and when they sold them for gold and silver,

a regulation equally tyrannical, but much less, effectual, than

that which it was meant to support. A positive law may render a

shilling a legal tender for a guinea, because it may direct the

courts of justice to discharge the debtor who has made that

tender; but no positive law can oblige a person who sells goods,

and who is at liberty to sell or not to sell as he pleases, to

accept of a shilling as equivalent to a guinea in the price of

them.