Hence, an interesting fact is presented to the view of the reader; that, ninety years ago, so small was the population, and so slender were the agricultural and commercial resources of Pennsylvania, that the scanty amount of a sum equivalent to forty thousand dollars, was deemed adequate to the relief of the public and private difficulties in the province, arising from the want of a sufficient circulating medium at that time. Yet such was the increase of population and trade, and such were the improvements in agriculture, in Pennsylvania, in half a century afterwards, that the last loan-office law, under the provincial government,[204] directed the emission of ten times the original sum; to be applied, in aid of land-improvements, in loans for the term of sixteen years; and repayable in like manner, with an annual interest of six per centum. ----- Footnote 204: Passed 26th February, 1773. ----- The same policy was pursued by the independent government of Pennsylvania. Under the first loan-office law of that state,[205] the sum of fifty thousand pounds was issued in bills of credit; and eight years afterwards, a further sum of half a million of dollars (or 187,500_l._) was appropriated for the purposes of a loan-office on similar principles, in pursuance of a law of the state.[206] But, as the individual state-governments were prohibited by the constitution of the United States, then recently established, from emitting bills of credit, or making any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts,—the money to be employed in loans, on mortgages of real estates, was to be borrowed, according to the provisions of the law last mentioned, from the bank of Pennsylvania; a power which the state had reserved, for that express purpose, in the act to incorporate the subscribers to that bank.[207] ----- Footnote 205: Passed 4th April, 1785. Footnote 206: Passed 11th April, 1793. Footnote 207: Passed 30th March, 1793. -----