device had been resorted to again and again, after its evils had been thrust before everybody's eyes; and he proved himself a true prophet when he said that if the United States should ever again have a great war to conduct, people would have forgotten all about these things, and would call for fresh issues of inconvertible paper, with similar disastrous results. Now was the time to stop it once for all. "Yes," echoed Roger Sherman, "this is the favourable crisis for crushing paper money." "This is the time," said his colleague, Ellsworth, "to shut and bar the door against paper money, which can in no case be necessary. Give the government credit, and other resources will offer. The power may do harm, never good." There was no way, he added, in which powerful friends could so soon be gained for the new constitution as by withholding this power from the government. James Wilson took the same view. "It will have the most salutary influence on the credit of the United States," said he, "to remove the possibility of paper money." "Rather than grant the power to Congress," said John Langdon, "I would reject the whole plan." "The words which grant this power," said George Read of Delaware, "if not struck out, will be as alarming as the mark of the Beast, in the Apocalypse." On none of the subjects that came up for discussion during that summer was the convention more nearly unanimous than in its condemnation of paper money. The only delegate who ventured to speak in its favour was Mercer of Maryland. What Hamilton would have said, if he had been present that day, we may judge from his vigorous words published some time before. The power to emit an inconvertible paper as a sign of value ought never hereafter to be used; for in its very nature, said he, it is "pregnant with abuses, and liable to be made the engine of imposition and fraud, holding out temptations equally pernicious to the integrity of government and to the morals of the people." Paterson called it "sanctifying iniquity by law." The same views were entertained by Washington and Madison. There were a few delegates, however, who thought it unsafe to fetter Congress absolutely. To use Luther Martin's expression, they did not set themselves up to be "wise beyond every event." George Mason said he "had a mortal hatred to paper money, yet, as he could not foresee all emergencies, he was unwilling to tie the hands of the legislature. The late war," he thought, "could not have been carried on had such a prohibition existed." Randolph spoke to the same effect. It was finally decided, by the vote of nine states against New Jersey and Maryland, that the power to issue inconvertible paper should not be granted to the federal government. An express prohibition, such as had been adopted for the separate states, was thought unnecessary. It was supposed that it was enough to withhold the power, since the federal government would not venture to exercise it unless expressly permitted in the Constitution.