But, to the honor of the islanders, these propositions met with little favor. They said, we mean to be an honest and also a free people; and, therefore, every one in buying or selling shall do exactly what he has agreed to do; unless, by reason of some unforeseen or unavoidable circumstances, he is absolutely unable to perform his agreement or contract. And they said, further, that if any one receives commodities and services, and promises to give, five years or five minutes afterward, in return, an agreed-upon quality and quantity of gold, wheat, cod-fish, or cabbages, it shall be considered, as in truth it is, dishonest to attempt to discharge the obligation by offering pig-iron in the place of gold, pease or beans in the place of wheat, soft-shell crabs in the place of cod-fish, or pumpkins in the place of cabbages; and any community which shall in any way sanction any such evasion of the letter or spirit of its obligations can have no rightful claim to call itself an honest, Christian people; and if any community enacts and maintains laws compelling any person to receive in exchange, or in pay for his services or products, something which he did not agree to and would not otherwise receive, such a community has no rightful claim to call itself a free community. The people on the island, therefore, decided that they would allow the island authorities to interfere with exchanges to this extent only: that the medium of exchange and measure of values that they had adopted and called a Friday, or a dollar, should always and under all circumstances contain 25.8 grains of standard gold; that this standard should never be departed from; and that although no one should be compelled to use it, yet whenever any one talked about or promised to pay or give money, without specifying whether the money should be wampum money, bead money, cattle money, gold money, or any other particular kind of money, the money issued by the acknowledged authorities of the island should be understood and accepted as what was meant. In short, like sensible men, the islanders concluded that as long as they maintained in common use a real, good, and true money, which carried on its face evidence (easily read and known of all men) of its value or purchasing power, there was little use of cumbering up the statute-book with any thing about legal tender. They would leave that to other people wiser than they were, who desired to use money that would not circulate, except it had some artificial power or agency back of it to make it go.