Virginia was involved from May, 1755, in measures of war, and immediate and increasing issues of paper bills were made which from the beginning were a lawful tender for private debts. For the new "notes" of April, 1757, it was further ordered that any seller who should demand more for his goods in notes than in gold or silver coin, should "forfeit 20 per cent of their value." ... In 1781, in the month of March, Virginia directed the emission of £10,000,000 and authorized £5,000,000 more; and the Continental paper currency and its own were made a legal tender in discharge of all debts and contracts, except contracts which expressly promised the contrary. In 1780 North Carolina directed the emission of more than £1,000,000, and such further sums as the exigencies of the state might require; in the next year gave authority at one dash to issue $26,250,000 of paper dollars bearing 6 per cent interest. Again in 1783, North Carolina emitted £100,000, declaring each pound of the emission equal to two and one-half Spanish milled dollars, and a tender in all payments whatever. In 1785, the state emitted £100,000 more. South Carolina, too, as late as 1785, permitted itself to be persuaded to lend among the constituents of its legislature £100,000 in paper bills of the state, which were to pass in payments to the treasury of the state but were not otherwise made legal tender. The state soon perceived that the paper banished more gold and silver than the amount of the bills which were to take their place.... This was done, although its legislature on the pretext of creating a fund to sink former Bills of Credit, and to encourage trade and commerce in July, 1712, had ordered £52,000 in new bills of credit to be stamped and put out at interest in loans. In December, 1717, they passed this statute: "It is found by experience that the multiplicity of the Bills of Credit hath been the cause of the ruin of our trade and commerce, and hath been the great evil of this province, and that it ought with all expedition to be remedied." Finally, the great Empire State, with all the rest, entered eagerly into the defense of its northern frontier, and in November, 1709, for the first time involved itself in the use of Bills of Credit. In 1770, the legislature of New York passed an Act for emitting £120,000 in Bills of Credit to be put out on loan. Again in April, 1786, the opening year of the final great movement for a closer union of the state, it placed an emission of £200,000 in Bills of Credit with loan officers, to be loaned on mortgage security; and they were made a legal tender in any suit for debt or damages, and the costs of suit. The bills were further to be received for duties to be collected at the Port of New York by the state. Gen. MacDougal, the brave soldier and patriot, though sick unto death, insisted upon being carried to the Senate, that, as the last act of his public life, he might give his voice against the proposal to emit paper money.