Benjamin Franklin

Gold and silver have undoubtedly some properties that give them a fitness above paper, as a medium of exchange; particularly their universal estimation; especially in cases where a country has occasion to carry its money abroad, either as…

Paper-money well funded has another great advantage over gold and silver; its lightness of carriage, and the little room that is occupied by a great sum; whereby it is capable of being more easily, and more safely, because more privately…

Their value rests chiefly in the estimation they happen to be in among the generality of nations, and the credit given to the opinion, that that estimation will continue.

Any other well-founded credit, is as much an equivalent as gold and silver; and in some cases more so, or it would not be preferred by commercial people in different countries.

The fact in the middle colonies is really this: on the emission of the first paper-money, a difference soon arose between that and silver; the latter having a property the former had not, a property always in demand in the colonies; to…

Nor has any alteration been occasioned by the paper-money, in the price of the necessaries of life, when compared with silver: they have been for the greatest part of the time no higher than before it was emitted; varying only by plenty…

Thus trade, instead of being increased by such bills, is diminished; and by their being shut up in chests, the very end of making them (viz. to furnish a medium of commerce) is in a great measure, if not totally defeated.

The experience of now near half a century in the middle colonies has convinced them of it among themselves; by the great increase of their settlements, numbers, buildings, improvements, agriculture, shipping, and commerce.

And the same experience has satisfied the British merchants, who trade thither, that it has been greatly useful to them, and not in a single instance prejudicial.

It is a happy country where justice, and what was your own before, can be had for ready money.

If you pay ready money for your laws, and those laws are not liked by the proprietaries, you are charged with bribery and corruption: if you wait a while before you pay, you are accused of detaining the governor's customary right, and…

Let us therefore, once for all, examine this unjust law, article by article, in order to see, whether our assemblies have been such villains as they have been represented.

Before we go farther, let it be observed, that the main design of the proprietaries in opposing this act was, to prevent their estates being taxed at all.

Is there upon earth a man besides, with any conception of what is honest, with any notion of honour, with the least tincture in his veins of the gentleman, but would have blushed at the thought; but would have rejected with disdain such…

Here then we have a full view of the assembly's injustice; about which there has been so much insolent triumph!

That the proprietary estate ought, with other estates, to be taxed:" and thereby did in effect determine and pronounce, that the opposition so long made in various shapes to that just principle, by the proprietaries, was fundamentally…

An injustice they were not, like the assembly, under any necessity of committing for the public good, or any other necessity but what was imposed on them by those base passions, that act the tyrant in bad minds; their selfishness, their…

But he was pleased to found upon it a claim manifestly unjust, and which he was totally destitute of reason to support.

Wisdom in the mind is not like money in the purse, diminished by communication to others: they might have lighted up our farthing candles for us, without lessening the blaze of their own flambeaux.

Cruel parsimony! to refuse the charity of a little understanding, when God had given you so much, and the assembly begged it as an alms!

Be niggards of advice on no pretence; For the worst avarice is that of sense.

Pleasant surely it is to hear the proprietary partizans, of all men, bawling for the constitution, and affecting a terrible concern for our liberties and privileges.

Will the wolves then protect the sheep, if they can but persuade them to give up their dogs?

Yes; the assembly would destroy all their own rights, and those of the people; and the proprietary partizans are become the champions for liberty!

Our legal method of compulsion is by imprisonment: the Indians cannot and will not imprison one another; and if we attempt to imprison them, I apprehend it would be generally disliked by the nations, and occasion breaches.