The vital question was the question of finance. Congress appealed to the states and the states to the towns. A convention met at East Greenwich and attempted to fix upon a maximum scale of prices for articles of consumption. The establishment of rates for labor and board and manufactures, was left with the towns. The fatal effects of a false system of political economy fell heavily upon both town and country. Trading in gold and silver was discouraged and desperate efforts made to relieve the country from the pressure of present debt; but the root of the evil lay too deep, and bankruptcy was already at the door. One act, however, of these days of trial, we can still dwell upon with satisfaction. In spite of the manumission act an attempt was made to sell some slaves to the South. The Assembly interfered for their protection and forbade the sale. The Greenwich Convention had left its work unfinished. A new convention was called in September to finish it, and every effort was made to raise the loan recommended by Congress. At the suggestion of Massachusetts a convention of the five Eastern States was called to meet at Hartford and take these difficult questions into consideration. And thus the days and months passed away, monotonously sad, with little of present enjoyment and still less of promise for the future. Men lived like those who carry their lives in their hands and have no hold on the morrow. At last the long looked for day came. Fifty-two transports entered Newport harbor and immediately the work of embarkation began. Six thousand men with their baggage and military stores and a melancholy train of Tories were to bid goodbye to their pleasant quarters. When all was ready the inhabitants were forbidden to venture into the streets on pain of death, and the march to the place of embarkation at Brenton's Point began. Then was heard for the last time in the streets of Newport the British drum and the measured tread of an enemy's march. All day long the boats were plying to and fro, and at sunset the fleet set sail. Forty-six Tories, with such property as they could carry, and a large band of liberated slaves went with it. The last act of the troops was to burn the barracks at Brenton's Point and the light-house at Beaver Tail. When the inhabitants began to look about them and count their losses, they found that over five hundred houses had been destroyed and property to the value of nearly one hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds ruined in the Town of Newport alone. The population had been reduced by more than half, and among the emigrants were the Lopez, and Hays, and Riveiras, and Touros, rich and enterprising Jews. One outrage it is difficult to explain, the robbery of the town records, which were put on board one of the transports and sent to New York. This alone would have been a great injury, for they contained the history of the Colony from its foundation, and as parts of that history the record of sales and grants of land.