The relations sustained by Franklin to the Continental paper currency we have already seen. There was an apparent element of inconsistency in his suggestion that it should bear interest; for interest-bearing bills, he had contended in his _Remarks and Facts Concerning American Paper Money_, were objectionable as currency, because it was tedious to calculate interest on one of them, as often as it changed hands, and also because a distinct advantage was to be gained by hoarding them. The Continental bills depreciated so rapidly that in 1777 the price of a bushel of salt at Baltimore was nine pounds. Three years later, the price of a yard of cassimere in America was $300, and of a yard of jean and habit cloth $60. Inflated as the bills were, Franklin with his cheerful habit of mind was not at a loss to say a good word for them. There was some advantage to the general public, at any rate, he wrote to Stephen Sayre, in the facility with which taxes could be paid off with the depreciated paper. Congress, he wrote to Dr. Cooper, had blundered in not earlier adopting his suggestion that the interest on the bills should be paid in real money. The _only Remedy_ now [he said] seems to be a Diminution of the Quantity by a vigourous Taxation, of great nominal Sums, which the People are more able to pay, in proportion to the Quantity and diminished Value; and the _only Consolation_ under the Evil is, that the Publick Debt is proportionably diminish'd with the Depreciation; and this by a kind of imperceptible Tax, everyone having paid a Part of it in the Fall of Value that took place between his receiving and Paying such Sums as pass'd thro' his hands. In this same letter, Franklin declared that it was a mystery to foreign politicians how America had been able to continue a war for four years without money, and how it could pay with paper that had no previously fixed fund appropriated specifically to redeem it. "This Currency, as we manage it," he said, "is a wonderful Machine. It performs its Office when we issue it; it pays and clothes Troops, and provides Victuals and Ammunition; and when we are obliged to issue a Quantity excessive, it pays itself off by Depreciation." The paper he subsequently wrote to Thomas Ruston had really operated as a tax, and was perhaps the most equal of all taxes, since it depreciated in the hands of holders of money, and thereby taxed them in proportion to the sums they held and the time they held them, which generally was in proportion to men's wealth.