It is easy to see why farmers should have been loath to raise more than they needed for their own use,--why merchants should have been unwilling to lay in stores which they might be compelled to sell at prices so truly nominal that the money which they received would often sink to half they had taken it for before they were able to pass it. But it is not so easy to see why this wretched substitute for values should have circulated so freely to the very last. Even at two hundred for one, with the knowledge that the next twenty-four hours might make that two hundred two hundred and fifty, or even more, without the slightest hope that it would ever be redeemed at its nominal value, it would still buy everything that was to be sold,--provisions, goods, houses, lands, even hard money itself. Down to its last gasp there were speculations afoot to take advantage of the differences in the degree of its worthlessness at different places, and buy it up in one place to sell it at another,--to buy it in Philadelphia at two hundred and twenty-five for one, and sell it in Boston at seventy-five for one. It was possible, if the ball passed quickly from hand to hand, that some might gain; it was very manifest that some must lose: and thus outcrops that pernicious doctrine, that true, life-giving, health-diffusing commerce consists in stripping one to clothe another. And thus we reach the memorable year 1781, the great, decisive year of the war. While Greene was fighting Cornwallis and Rawdon, and Washington watching eagerly for an opportunity to strike at Clinton, Congress was busy making up its accounts. One circumstance told for them. There was no longer the same dearth of gold and silver which had embarrassed them so much at the beginning of the war. A gainful commerce was now opened with the West Indies. The French army and the French fleet were here, and hard money with them. Louis-d'ors and livres and Spanish dollars,--how welcome must their pleasant faces have looked, after this long, long absence! With what a thrill must the hand which had touched nothing for years but Continental bills have closed upon solid gold and silver! It is easy to conceive that a new spirit must soon have manifested itself in the wide circle of contractors and agents,--that shopkeepers must speedily have discovered that their business was shifting its ground as they obtained a reliable standard for counting their losses and gains,--that every branch of commerce must have felt a new vigor diffusing itself through its veins. But it is equally evident, that, while the gold and silver which flowed in upon them from these sources strengthened the people for the work they were to do and the burdens they were to bear, the comparisons they were daily making between fluctuating paper and steadfast metal were not of a nature to strengthen their faith in money that could be made by a turn of the printing-press and a few strokes of the pen.