A question vital to Massachusetts worried her in the midst of her triumph. She had been bankrupt for many years, and of the large volume of her outstanding obligations, a part was not worth eight pence in the pound. Added to her load of debt, she had spent £183,649 sterling on the Louisbourg expedition. That which Smollett calls “the most important achievement of the war” would never have taken place but for her, and Old England, and not New, was to reap the profit; for Louisbourg, conquered by arms, was to be restored by diplomacy. If the money she had spent for the mother-country were not repaid, her ruin was certain. William Bollan, English by birth and a son-in-law of Shirley, was sent out to urge the just claim of the province, and after long and vigorous solicitation, he succeeded. The full amount, 143 in sterling value, was paid to Massachusetts, and the expenditures of New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island were also reimbursed.[163] The people of Boston saw twenty-seven of those long unwieldy trucks which many elders of the place still remember as used in their youth, rumbling up King Street to the treasury, loaded with two hundred and seventeen chests of Spanish dollars, and a hundred barrels of copper coin. A pound sterling was worth eleven pounds of the old-tenor currency of Massachusetts, and thirty shillings of the new-tenor. Those beneficent trucks carried enough to buy in at a stroke nine-tenths of the old-tenor notes of the province,--nominally worth above two millions. A stringent tax, laid on by the Assembly, paid the remaining tenth, and Massachusetts was restored to financial health.[164] [121] _Shirley to Newcastle, 7 June, 1745._ [122] Douglas, _Summary_, i. 347. [123] _Record of the Council of War, 9 May, 1745._ [124] _Vaughan to Pepperrell, 11 May, 1745._ [125] _Vaughan to Pepperrell, 12 May, 1745._ [126] _Waldo to Pepperrell, 23 May, 1745._ [127] _Ibid., 26 May, 1745._ [128] “There is scarce three hundred men on this atact [attack], so there will be a sufficient number of Whail boats.”--_Waldo to Pepperrell, 26 May, 10½ p. m._ [129] The list of a company of forty-two “subscribers to go voluntarily upon an attack against the Island Battery” is preserved. It includes a negro called “Ruben.” The captain, chosen by the men, was Daniel Bacon. The fact that neither this name nor that of Brooks, the chief commander, is to be found in the list of commissioned officers of Pepperrell’s little army (see Parsons, _Life of Pepperrell, Appendix_) suggests the conclusion that the “subscribers” were permitted to choose officers from their own ranks. This list, however, is not quite complete. [130] _Journal of the Siege_, appended to Shirley’s report. [131] _Duchambon au Ministre, 2 Septembre, 1745. Bigot au Ministre, 1 Août, 1745._