The heavy expenses which had been incurred by the New England colonies, and especially by Massachusetts, had occasioned large emissions of paper money, and an unavoidable depreciation. Instead of availing themselves of peace, to discharge the debts contracted during war, they eagerly desired to satisfy every demand on the public treasury, by farther emissions of bills of credit, redeemable at future and distant periods. Every inconvenience under which commerce was supposed to labour, every difficulty encountered in the interior economy of the province, was attributed to a scarcity of money; and this scarcity was to be removed, not by increased industry, but by putting an additional sum in circulation. The rate of exchange, and the price of all commodities, soon disclosed the political truth that, however the quantity of the circulating medium may be augmented, its aggregate value cannot be arbitrarily increased; and that the effect of such a depreciating currency must necessarily be, to discourage the payment of debts, by holding out the hope of discharging contracts with less real value than that for which they were made; and to substitute cunning and speculation, for honest and regular industry. Yet the majority had persevered in this demoralising system. The depreciation had reached eleven for one; and the evil was almost deemed incurable, when the fortunate circumstance of a reimbursement in specie, made by parliament for colonial expenditures on account of the expeditions against Louisbourg and Canada, suggested to Mr. Hutchinson, speaker of the house of representatives in Massachusetts, the idea of redeeming the paper money in circulation, at its then real value. This scheme, at first deemed Utopian, was opposed by many well meaning men who feared that its effect would be to give a shock to the trade and domestic industry of the province; and who thought that, as the depreciation had been gradual, justice required that the appreciation should be gradual also. [Sidenote: Paper money redeemed.] With great difficulty, the measure was carried; and the bills of credit in circulation, were redeemed at fifty shillings the ounce. The evils which had been apprehended were soon found to be imaginary. Specie immediately took the place of paper. Trade, so far from sustaining a shock, nourished more than before this change in the domestic economy of the colony; and the commerce of Massachusetts immediately received an impulse, which enabled it to surpass that of her neighbours who retained their paper medium.[143] [Footnote 143: Hutchison.] [Sidenote: Renewal of contests with the French colonies respecting boundary.]