From an original bill in the Harvard College copy of Phillips’ _Hist. Sketches_. There is a fac-simile of a N. H. bill of forty shillings in Gay’s _Pop. Hist. U. S._, iii. p. 133; and one of a bill of 1742-43 in Cassell’s _Hist. United States_, i. p. 486.] A fortunate plan for withdrawing the debased paper currency of Massachusetts Bay was finally matured.[416] Though the taking of Louisbourg had severely taxed the colony with a financial burden, the loss of it by treaty now made the way clear to throw off the same burden. William Bollan, the son-in-law of Shirley, had gone over after the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle to represent how the sacrifices of New England deserved more recognition than was seemingly paid them in the surrender of her conquest. This and other reasons prevailed, and the government agreed to reimburse the province for the cost of the siege. This was reckoned on the new basis of paper money. Shirley in 1743 had been allowed to give his assent to an issue called “new tenor,” in which the value to silver was about ten times as great as the enormous flood of issues then in circulation bore, and these last were now known as “old tenor.” On this new basis Louisbourg had cost £261,700, which was held to be equivalent to £183,600 in London, the pound sterling equalling now about 30 shillings of the new tenor, and £11 of the old.[417] This agreement had been reached in 1749,[418] and the specie was shipped to Boston. Two hundred and seventeen chests of Spanish dollars and a hundred casks of copper coin were carted up King Street, in September, the harbinger of new prosperity. It was due most to Thomas Hutchinson’s skilful urgency that the assembly, of which he was now speaker, was induced to devote this specie to the redeeming of the paper bills of the “old tenor,” of which £2,000,000 were in circulation.[419] It was agreed to pay about one pound in specie for ten in paper, and the commissioners closed their labors in 1751, the silver and copper already mentioned paying nine tenths of it, while a tax was laid to pay the remaining tenth. About £1,800,000 in current bills were presented; the rest had been destroyed or hid away and forgotten.[420] Rhode Island had received £6,322 as her share of the whole; but as she was not wise enough to apply it to the bettering of her currency, she suffered the evils of a depreciated paper longer than her neighbors.[421] The same lack of wisdom governed New Hampshire. Connecticut had always been conservative in her monetary practices.