“He that will understand,” says Bancroft,[389] “the political character of New England in the eighteenth century must study the constitution of its towns, its congregations, its schools, and its militia.”[390] =C.= FINANCE AND REVENUE.—Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull in a pamphlet, _First Essays at Banking and the first paper money in New England_ (Worcester, 1884,—from the Council Report of the American Antiquarian Society, Oct., 1884), traces more fully than has been done by Jos. B. Felt, in his _Historical account of Massachusetts Currency_ (Boston, 1839), and by Paine in the Council Report of the same society, April, 1866,[391] the efforts at private banking previous to the province issue of bills in 1690, and with particular reference to a tract, which he ascribes to the Rev. John Woodbridge, of Newbury, called _Severals relating to the fund, printed for divers reasons as may appear_ (Boston, probably 1681-82).[392] Dr. Trumbull attributes to Cotton Mather a paper sustaining the policy of issuing paper bills in 1690, which was published as _Some considerations on the Bills of Credit now passing in New England_ (Boston, 1691),[393] to which was appended _Some additional considerations_, which the same writer thinks may have been the work of John Blackwell, who had been the projector of a private bank authorized in 1689. Similar views as there expressed are adopted by Mather in his _Life of Phips_, as printed separately in 1697, and as later included in the _Magnalia_. In Dec., 1690, the bills of the £7,000 which were first authorized began to be put forth. Felt (p. 50) gives the style of them, and though an engraved form was adopted some of the earliest of the issues were written with a pen, as shown by the fac-simile of one in the _Proceedings_ of the Massachusetts Hist. Soc. (1863, p. 428). Up to 1702 there had been emissions and repetitions of emissions of about £110,000, when another £10,000 was put out. A fac-simile of one of these notes is given in Smith’s _Hist. and Literary Curiosities_, p. xlv. The issues for the next few years were as follows: 1706, £10,000; 1707, £22,000; 1708, £10,000; 1709, £60,000; 1710, £40,000; 1711, £65,000,—a total of £207,000. In the following year (1712), the province bills of Massachusetts were made legal tender,[394] but the break had come. The public confidence was shaken, and their decline in value rapidly increased under the apprehension, which the repeated putting off of the term of redemption engendered. In Connecticut the management was more prudent. She issued in the end £33,500, but all her bills were redeemed with scarce any depreciation. A fac-simile of one of her three-shilling bills (1709) is given in the _Connecticut Colony Records_, 1706-1716, p. 111.[395]