The original act passed in January, 1799, was intended to remedy two evils. The first, but not the chief one, was to put a stop to the keeping of accounts, the taking of notes or the making of any kind of contract where payment in money was stipulated for, in pounds, shillings and pence, and to compel the use in all such obligations of the terms dollars and cents; and to more effectually enforce this, the act prohibited courts from rendering judgments, making out bills of costs or issuing executions for anything but dollars and cents. The second evil the act, in its original form and provisions, had forever cut up by the roots was the “specie” account or contract--that is to say, the shrewd keepers of accounts and money-lenders would embody in the account, note or other obligation, where money was stipulated for, the term “specie.” If it was an account, it would be opened something like this: “Spruce McCay, in account with Ephraim Dunlap--specie”; or if a note, due-bill or other obligation, the term “specie” usually followed the “promise to pay” or the statement of the amount contracted to be paid or acknowledged to be due. To the close student of the methods which are usually employed by the artful and designing, these several acts are amusing--first suspending a particular section, then suspending it again, then repealing part of it, and finally accomplishing the repeal of the whole section. Now, note. The first repealing act excepted from its provisions “merchants, physicians and inn-keepers”; that is, the repealing act was so artfully worded as to leave the original act in full force against the three classes mentioned--about the only people who transacted any business of consequence and who required payment in money at that time. These could not make any contract, or keep an account, for payment in “specie”--they must accept payment in the currency of the times. The system of barter, at this period, between the agricultural class and the blacksmith, cooper, wagonmaker, shoemaker, etc., was such that accounts between them were so kept as to be payable in the products of each, and not in money--no money ever being passed between them or expected. Thus, this first repealing act, stripped of the film that shrouded it, simply left the original act in full force against everybody that it could have affected, except one poor fellow--or one class of poor fellows--the man or men who had a little bit of money to loan on a note with “undoubted personal security” or secured by mortgage.