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Jersey,
Pennsylvania, and
Maryland, one hundred for
one hundred and sixty or seventy, or two hundred; of
South Carolina, one for eight; while of North Caroli-Na—of all the states the least commercial in its character—the paper was in
London esteemed worth but one for fourteen, in the colony but one for ten.
And yet the policy itself was not repudiated.
The statesmen of
England never proposed or desired to raise the do-
mestic currency of the colonies to an equality with that of the great commercial world; and the system which
Franklin had advocated found an apologist in
Pownall, and was defended by
Edmund Burke, except that
Burke, instead of a currency of depreciated paper, proposed an emission of base coin.
The disputes about the currency led to collisions between the provinces and
England.
The proclamation of Queen Anne was nugatory.
It pretended to give to coin one value in
England, another in the colonies; but as the coin, being an actual product of labor, could not change, it was, in fact, but giving to the words pounds, shillings, and pence, a different signification in
America from that which they bore in
Europe.
A queen's proclamation could not affect the value of
gold or
silver.
As little could a royal proclamation fix the value of the colonial paper, which was contingent on the results of the past legislation, on the character of the future policy, of ten or twelve disconnected colo nial governments.
Thus the great topic of variance between
England and her continental colonies of
America, lay in the mercantile system and its consequences.
Controversies were also occurring in every part of the country
Did the lumberers in
Maine, on any land first pur-
chased since the grant of the new charter of
Massachusetts,
