To Mr. Stone, a member of the Senate of Maryland, who appealed to Washington to allow his opinion on this subject to be made publicly known, Washington wrote just three months before the opening of the Constitutional convention, as follows: "As my sentiments thereon have been fully and decidedly expressed long before the assembly either of Maryland or of this state was convened, I do not scruple to declare, that if I had had a voice in your legislature, it would have been given decidedly against a paper emission upon the general principles of its utility, as a representative and the necessity of it as a medium. "To assign reasons for this opinion would be as unnecessary as tedious. The ground has been so often trod that a place hardly remains untouched. In a word the necessity arising from the want of specie is represented as greater than it really is. I contend that it is by the substance, not with the shadow of a thing, we are to be benefited. The wisdom of man, in my humble opinion, cannot at this time devise a plan, by which the credit of paper money would be long supported; consequently, depreciation keeps pace with the quantity of the emission, and articles for which it is exchanged rise in a greater ratio than the sinking value of the money. Wherein then is the farmer, the planter, the artisan benefited? An evil equally great is the door it immediately opens for speculation, by which the least designing, and perhaps most valuable part of the community are preyed upon by the more knowing and crafty speculators." In 1785, George Mason wrote "they may pass a law to issue paper money, but twenty laws will not make the people receive it. Paper money is founded upon fraud and knavery." On the first day of August, 1786, Washington wrote to Jefferson: "Other states are falling into the very foolish and wicked plans of emitting paper money." In May, 1788, Charles Pinckney, in a speech in the Convention of South Carolina, said: "I apprehend these general reasons will be found true with respect to paper money; that experience has shown that in every state where it has been practiced since the Revolution, it always carries the gold and silver out of the country, and impoverishes it."