While the credit of the loan-office bills of credit, emitted in moderate sums by the assembly of Pennsylvania, was fully supported, during the course of seventy years, the quantities of paper-money issued at different times, by the legislative body of Massachusetts, down to the year 1748, had then depreciated that currency, for want of it being bottomed on sufficient funds, to one-eleventh part of its nominal value. Fortunately, about that period, a large sum in specie arrived from England, having been granted by the British parliament to reimburse the monies expended by the colonists in the expeditions against Louisburg and Canada. In Massachusetts, this money was wisely applied by its legislature to the redemption of the bills of credit of that colony, then in circulation; which were sunk, in the succeeding year, at the rate of fifty shillings, in those bills, for one ounce of silver. Thus, the mint-price of an ounce of sterling silver being five shillings and two pence, the bills were redeemed at the rate of nearly nine shillings and eight pence, of their nominal value, for one shilling in English coin. Footnote 203: How different, in this respect, from that species of paper-credit, which, during the American war, succeeded it, under the denomination of _continental money_! But this had nothing but the faith of government pledged for its redemption; while the loan-office bills of credit were bottomed (as all government-paper ought ever to be) on an appropriated, sufficient, and substantial fund. For want of such a foundation, Dr. Morse remarks, that “The whole history of the continental paper is a history of public and private frauds. Old specie debts,” says he, “were often paid in a depreciated currency; and even new contracts, for a few weeks or days, were often discharged with a small part of their value. From this plenty, and the fluctuating state of the medium, sprung hosts of speculators and itinerant traders, who left their honest occupations for the purpose of immense gains in a fraudulent business, that depended on no fixed principles, and the profits of which could be reduced to no certain calculations.” See his Geographical work. -----