The passion for borrowing spread like flame on the dry prairie. In November, 1714, Massachusetts ordered £50,000 to be let out by trustees to the inhabitants of the province for five years on real security, at 5 per cent per annum, to be paid back in five annual installments. The Act was a sacrifice of the public interests to borrowers, who were to return their loan only after a lapse of time, sufficient to insure the very great depreciation of the paper in which it was to be paid. Moreover, the borrowers needed an enforcement by law of the circulation of the paper which they borrowed: swiftly, therefore, in December, 1715, under a pretext "to prevent the oppression of debtors" a stringent statute made the bills legal tender for all debts that had been, or should be contracted, between the 30th of October, 1705, and the 30th of October, 1722. The loan of Bills of Credit by Massachusetts in 1714 was managed at the seat of Government. But why should Boston be favored? "That the husbandry, fishery and other trades of the province might be encouraged and promoted," Bills of Credit on the province to the amount of £100,000 were in 1716 ordered to be distributed to a loan office in each county. But why should borrowers in the smaller townships be forced to travel to their shire towns? Let a public money lender be near every man's door. By the statute of March, 1721, £50,000 were distributed among borrowers in each of the several towns according to its proportion in the last province tax. Again in 1728, £60,000 in Bills of Credit were proportionately loaned among the several towns, even on personal security, at the rate of 6 per cent for six years, after which repayment was to be made in five yearly installments. Of course, "money" disappeared; not even a single penny was to be had; the small change became of paper. The next development of the colonial system of paper money was a partial repudiation, so far as Massachusetts was concerned. In February, 1737, less than forty-seven years after the first emission of Bills of Credit by Massachusetts, that colony issued £9,000 of a new tenor of which one dollar was to be equal to three of the old, and which, after five years, was to be redeemed at par in silver and gold. When the time of redemption came around they were not paid off, but by a further repudiation four pounds for one was made the rate in exchanging the old tenor for the new. On the 9th of January, 1739, the general court in Massachusetts made this confession: "The emissions of great quantities of bills of public credit, without certain provision for their redemption by lawful money in convenient time, have already stripped us of all our money and brought them into contempt to the great scandal of the government; for the remedy thereof this province hath fixed the value of their bills in lawful money, and the time of their redemption in 1742 new style."