In the same November the Treasury was ordered to make every preparation for a new issue; and to meet the wants of the retail trade, it was resolved at the same time to issue five hundred thousand dollars in bills of two-thirds, one-third, one-sixth, and one-ninth of a dollar. Evident as it ought now to have been that nothing but taxation could relieve them, they still shrank from it. "Do you think, Gentlemen," said a member, "that I will consent to load my constituents with taxes, when we can send to our printer and get a wagon-load of money, one quire of which will pay for the whole?" It was so easy a way of making money that men seemed to be getting into the humor of it. The campaign of '77, like the campaign of '76, was fought upon paper-money without any material depreciation. The bills could never be signed as fast as they were called for. But this could not last. The public mind was growing anxious. Extensive interests, in some cases whole fortunes, were becoming involved in the question of ultimate payment. The alarm gained upon Congress. Burgoyne, indeed, was conquered; but a more powerful, more insidious enemy, one to whom they themselves had opened the gate, was already within their works and fast making his way to the heart of the citadel. The depreciation had reached four for one, and there was but one way to prevent it from going lower. Congress deliberated anxiously. Thus far the public faith had supported the war. But, they reasoned, the quantity of the money for which this faith stood pledged already exceeded the demands of commerce, and hence its value was proportionably reduced. Add to this the arts of open and secret enemies, the avidity of professed friends, and the scarcity of foreign commodities, and it is easy to account for the depreciation. "The consequences were equally obvious and alarming,"--"depravity of morals, decay of public virtue, a precarious supply for the war, debasement of the public faith, injustice to individuals, and the destruction of the safety, honor, and independence of the United States." But "a reasonable and effectual remedy" was still within their reach, and therefore, "with mature deliberation and the most earnest solicitude," they recommended the raising by taxes on the different States, in proportion to their population, five millions of dollars in quarterly payments, for the service of 1778. But having explained, justified, and recommended, the power of Congress ceased. Like the Confederation, it had no right of coercion, no machinery of its own for acting upon the States. And, unhappily, the States, pressed by their individual wants, feeling keenly their individual sacrifices and dangers, failed to see that the nearest road to relief lay through the odious portal of taxation. Had the mysterious words that Dante read on the gates of Hell been written on it, they could not have shrunk from it with a more instinctive feeling:-- "All hope abandon, ye who enter here!"