John Witherspoon: “End the Fed”

John Witherspoon’s Essay on Money (1786) and his warnings to Congress on financial issues serve as a fitting rebuke to the plague current throughout American history (continuing strongly today) of inflation and manipulation of currency. The review of these materials, therefore, serves us well in the interest of history and of current events. But in order fully to appreciate their place and meaning, we ought first to understand their total context. Pursuing that context leads us into a world that—though over two and a quarter centuries removed—strangely mirrors our own. There we find our very policies, politicians, parties and problems represented as if viewing a play scripted for political and economic tragedy and rehearsed time and again throughout the generations.

The Continental Farce

There existed only about $10 million in total gold, silver, and paper currency in the colonies in 1775.[1] In May of that year, Congress began issuing paper Continental currency redeemable in silver and backed by promises of future taxation. The bills held their value early, but only shortly. By 1776, Congress had already issued $25 million in Continentals, thereby depreciating the circulating paper against the total hard money supply to only 40 percent of face value in barely a year. From 1775 to 1779, the supply ballooned beyond $240 million. From a record of depreciated values printed by Pelatiah Webster in 1791, we can tell that the market reacted with mathematical predictability, depreciating the value of the paper in due ratio. With 24 paper dollars in circulation for every silver or gold, we would expect the paper to trade for something around 4.2 percent of face value. According to Webster, sure enough, from September 1779 forward, Continentals drew less than five percent.[2] The markets, therefore, determined very accurately the weakness of the inflated currency and the inflated promises behind it.

Throughout this period, the Journals of the Continental Congress read almost like satire or comedy did we not already know it, actually, as a tragedy. Their reactions ranged from ridiculing the mere thought that Continental paper would ever lose value, to decrying those refused to accept them, to urging legal tender laws (and admission of the bills’ plummeting value), to capitulation and a call to end the same. The story plays out as follows:

The Folly of Legal Tender

The sole positive factor of Continentals lay in the absence of legal tender laws in the beginning—the Congress could not compel their acceptance as money. But when wary merchants naturally declined, Congress refused to blame their own policy and worthless currency, instead blaming “several evil disposed persons” for wishing to devalue the currency. As early as 1776 Congress boomed,

[t]hat if any person shall hereafter be so lost to all virtue and regard for his country, as to “refuse to receive said bills in payment,” or obstruct or discourage the currency or circulation thereof, … such person shall be deemed, published, and treated as an enemy of his country, and precluded from all trade or intercourse with the inhabitants of these colonies.[3]

Thus did the evil urges of tyranny flare while the ink still lay wet on the Declaration on Independence. Yet without power to enforce legal tender themselves, Congress swallowed hard and “recommended to the legislatures of the united States, … to make the bills of credit … a lawful tender of public and private debts.”[4]

Many State legislatures caved. Needing to raise the moral profile of their paper, they presented the financial support of the war as a moral and patriotic duty. Pennsylvania went so far as to denounce anyone who trusted economic reality more than government promises as “a dangerous Member of Society,” and decreed that such a derelict will both forfeit their debt contracted and pay a fine to the State.[5] An act of the Pennsylvania Assembly, December 23, 1780, raised the stakes, making their paper “a legal tender; with penalties for refusing to take them for goods, &c. viz. forfeiture of double the value offered; and for the second offense, of half the offender’s lands, goods, and chattels, and imprisonment of his person during the war.”[6]

Those possessing inflated paper loved having State force on their side, as they could, in effect, legally steal from those who needed to sell their commodities—forcing food or supplies to be sold at face value of bills worth much less in actuality. Where tender laws were not in force, some buyers took the liberty of force in their own hands: “A country man was beaten in the streets of Salem for refusing paper in exchange for his hard-earned meat.”[7] So often does propagandizing policy as patriotic duty induce delusions of entitlement. In Pennsylvania, October 4, 1779—before tender laws in that State—a mob moved from insult to violence, eventually firing muskets upon the house of one Mr. Wilson. The return fire left several dead. Prosecutors pursued the rest to Court, but the State Assembly intervened and pardoned all the offenders.[8] Webster would comment two years later, “We have seen uneasiness, tumults, and ferments among our citizens rise even to the shedding of blood, which doubtless originated with very bad men.”[9] He had in mind dishonest politicians who leveraged the baser impulses of greedy consumers as power behind their legal tender laws and further debasement of the currency. Such political interests had “fermented uneasiness, sparing neither art, nor violence, to effect their purpose,”[10] and maligned the character of those who called for honest money as “faction.” Webster replied, “When a man finds that eleven shillings out of every pound [55 percent] of his cash, is annihilated by a public resolution, we may allow him to be uneasy, without calling him factious.”[11]

Educated by even further hindsight, Supreme Court Justice John McLean would later offer an even broader condemnation. In his dissenting opinion on Craig v. Missouri (1830)—a case involving the right of a State to issue certain bills of credit—he first observed, “Various statutes were passed to force their circulation, and sustain their value; but they proved ineffectual.” He concluded, “These laws destroyed all just relations between creditor and debtor; and so debased a currency produced the most serious evils in almost all the relations of society.”[12]

In Praise of Folly

Despite the fact that legal tender laws in themselves present an open admission of the failure of their pet currency, Congress continued for over two subsequent years to praise their paper as invincible. It denounced the charges that Congress would eventually default as “false and derogatory to the honor of Congress.”[13] It promised it could redeem the total emission of paper “[w]ithout public inconvenience or private distress” and “leave the possessor of the bills satisfied with his security.”[14] Any blame for failure in this endeavor, Congress preached, must fall upon the people, not Congress, because

their constituents have actually ratified their acts by receiving their bills, passing laws establishing their currency; [therefore,] the people have pledged their faith for the redemption of [the bills], not only collectively by their representatives, but individually.[15]

When they reached the subject of the paper currency itself, Congress’ language verged on the divine:

paper money is the only kind of money which cannot “make unto itself wings and flyaway.” It remains with us, it will not forsake us, it is always ready and at hand for the purpose of commerce or taxes, and every industrious man can find it.[16]

Such praise played the role of the basest self-aggrandizement and deception on the part of a Congress hoping to secure a fig-leaf for the aspiring Emperor’s early and well-published nakedness. Even as these gilded promises rolled from Congress in fall of 1779, Continentals slid, as noted earlier, below five percent, never to return above. Congress knew this. Everyone knew this. Yet Congress had for four years created a veil of public assurances which they denied amongst themselves in private. In 1777, they had already acknowledged that

paper currency  …  is multiplied beyond the rules of good policy. No truth being more evident, than that where the quantity of money … exceeds what is useful as a medium of commerce, its comparative value must be proportionately reduced. To this cause … are we to ascribe the depreciation of our currency: the consequences to be apprehended are equally obvious and alarming. They tend to the depravity of morals,—decay of public virtue,—a precarious supply for the war,—debasement of the public faith,—injustice to individuals, and the destruction of the honour, safety, and independence of the United States. Loudly, therefore, are we called upon to provide a seasonable and effectual remedy.

Unfortunately, for the next two years its only remedy was hardly “effectual,” but severely compounded the same error over and over. From November to November, 1777 to 1779, Continentals depreciated from roughly 83 percent of face value to less than four—a 95 percent loss.[17] It continued to fall until Congress decreed a floor, but even this had no power to save the Continental from complete worthlessness.

In concert with this downward spiral ascended prices of daily goods. During this “witches’ dance of the paper currency,”[18] the price of staples tracked the 24-to-1 depreciation, although other marketable goods rose at differing rates. From 1776 to 1779, corn, rye, and beef spiked in price by a factor of 24. At the same time, labor prices rose by a factor of 18, hay 10, and men’s shoes 16.[19] In modern equivalents, roughly, a loaf of bread might cost $40, box of cereal $100, and a pair of dress shoes $1,600. The average merchant had to deal quickly to avoid as little loss as possible. Some loss was inevitable, however. One Mr. Jonathan Amory of Massachusetts complained of “so many regulating Bills &Acts forcing us to sell for this wicked paper” which “was not worth one third, and before I had a chance to lay it out, perhaps not one sixth of what I had taken it for.”[20]

The Final Curtain

When the value of Continentals reached its low, Congress eventually had to deal with the facts, yet in doing so it refused to own them. After having pleaded that the States institute legal tender laws, Congress in 1780 began to back off. It first took the baby step of recommending the States enforce tender in correspondence only with the paper’s lower value.[21] At the same time, Congress announced it would do the same. It decreed on March 18, 1780, that it would henceforth redeem Continentals for only “sixpence in the pound,” as Witherspoon puts it in his Speech on the Finances, which is exactly 2.5 cents on the dollar. Witherspoon notes the reaction of the intensely interested Chief of Finance in France, the Comte de Vergennes, who had labeled the measure an “act of bankruptcy.” Congress had, in effect, defaulted on its vaunted paper promises. Yet it refused to admit either its failure or impotence. Instead, as it gathered in Continentals for sparse pennies, it promoted new state paper renamed “bills of credit,” which passed as loans from government “loan-offices” and promised to repay with 6 percent interest.

With inflation so completely out of control by 1780, the measures had as much effect as trying to slow a freight train by dragging your feet. In 1781, Congress finally abandoned their stubborn paper program. Having impelled the States consistently during the previous years to impose Continentals as legal tender, all the while publically attributing the blessings of eternity to their paper, Congress now took the lead in declaring the ineffectiveness of coercing tender. With as much resolve as before, it recommended that “the States immediately … repeal any of their laws that may yet be in force making paper money of any kind a legal tender . . . experience having evinced the inefficiency of all attempts to support the credit of paper money by compulsory acts.”[22] During this brief time, Congress had even further lowered Continentals from 2.5 cents per dollar, to 1.3, and eventually less than a penny per dollar. Pelatiah Webster wrote its epitaph:

May 31, 1781, Continental money ceased to pass as currency, but was afterwards bought and sold as an article of speculation, at very uncertain and desultory prices. . . .[23]

The paper terror had passed into oblivion, along with the fortunes of many of its victims. The hapless holders of those pitiful papers—having entrusted, some of them, their entire substance to the baseless promises of several ambitious, and often clueless, men—counted themselves fortunate to receive a single silver dollar in exchange for 500 or even 1000.

The moral of the story, again, comes from the pen of Webster, who mused, “Perhaps this whole transaction affords the most striking proof conceivable, of the absurdity of all attempts to fix the value of money by a law, or any other methods of compulsion.”[24]

Witherspoon’s Warnings

In the majority decision to the case mentioned earlier, Craig v. Missouri (1830), Chief Justice John Marshall noted that, “Paper money was also issued in other colonies, both in the north and south; and whether made a tender or not, was productive of evils in proportion to the quantity emitted.” The evils McLean attributed to legal tender laws, therefore, Marshall blamed on paper money in general. Few of Marshall’s peers, however, would exercise so clear a judgment on paper while the printing pressed raged, 1775 forward. Among those few, however, was the Rev. John Witherspoon.

What McLean and Marshall mulled from a distance of decades, Witherspoon fought at ground zero. After signing the Declaration of Independence in 1776, he served in Congress until 1782—enduring the extremes of the Continental roller-coaster. His Essay on Money derives from speeches given in Congress during this time, and represents the minority opinion as the history above might indicate. Nevertheless, preaching at Witherspoon’s funeral, the Rev. John Rodgers relates that after the full demise of the Continental paper, many of the very men who had most strongly opposed Witherspoon in Congress acknowledged the error of their ways and urged him to collect and publish his speeches on the topic.[25] The product, which will soon be available as a newly re-typeset volume from American Vision, appeared as a single essay in 1786, and constitutes what Rodgers calls “one of the most clear and judicious essays that perhaps was ever written on the subject.”[26]

In the speeches that comprise the Essay, Witherspoon “opposed, at every emission after the first or second, and even hazarded his popularity for a time by the strenuousness of his opposition, that paper currency which gave such a wound to public credit.”[27] Rodgers summarizes Witherspoon’s position:

Instead of emissions of an unfunded paper, beyond a certain quantum, Dr. Witherspoon urged the propriety of making loans, and establishing funds for the payment of the interest; which in the temper of the public mind, he thought could then have been easily effected. America has since regretted that she had not pursued that policy.[28]

Returning to Congress in 1781 from a one-year sabbatical, Witherspoon witnessed the burial of the Continentals. Congress had ignored his pleas and advice; the effects of the inflation had rippled throughout the states and the de facto public treasury refused even to make good on the interest it had promised on its Bills of Credit. Witherspoon fought this continued dishonesty in his Speech on Paying the Interest of Loan-Office Certificates, arguing that failing to pay even the interest endangered the public credit and could thus lead to the dissolution of order. When Congress further refused, Witherspoon responded with a Speech on the Finances in which he called their refusal “the last stab to public credit.” After this measure, he warned, “It will be in vain, in future, to ask the public to believe any promise we shall make.” It is a shame that subsequent generations have not had the substance or integrity—whichever—to disdain the inflated promises of government with Witherspoon’s predicted incredulity.

Self-Interest

We should not make the mistake of believing the men involved—Witherspoon, Webster, and whoever else may have opposed inflation of currency—necessarily were angels in their cause. Along with their arguments of principle and of moral high ground, they often smirked with interest of their own. One instance appears in Witherspoon’s Speech on the Finances. Urging the presentation of the proper moral and practical arguments against failing to pay one’s promises, the very Trustees and donors backing Witherspoon’s College had invested heavily in Continentals and Bills of Credit and now faced financial ruin. Witherspoon spilled:

I speak from good knowledge. The trustees of the College of New Jersey in June, 1777, directed a committee of theirs to put all the money that should be paid up to them in the loan-office so that they have now nearly invested all. Some put in before March, 1778, and a greater part subsequent to that date. Now it must be known to everybody that since the payment of the interest bills gave a value to these early loans, many have continued their interest in them and rested in a manner wholly on them for support. Had they entertained the slightest suspicion that they would be cut off, they could have sold them for something and applied themselves to other means of subsistence; but as the case now stands, you are reducing not an inconsiderable number very best friends to absolute beggary.

As go the donors, so goes the College to a large degree. So Witherspoon also had personal motivations—as in regard to both friends and benefactors.

The same held true for Pelatiah Webster, who had achieved great wealth as a self-made businessman. As one forced for years to exchange his goods for consistently depreciating paper, he acutely felt the pains of Congress’ folly. This was true of all men of means who expect steady currency, and returns on investments and property.[29] In times of inflation, debtors can pay off their loans and leases with bad money at pennies on the dollar. When prices on commodities would naturally soar, then governments tend to intervene to impose legal tender laws and price controls. These tell the seller: you must accept devalued money and you cannot raise your prices. The merchant is thereby forced into economic loss so that the government may have a slim chance at saving face. Having previously educated himself well in economics and finance, Pelatiah foresaw the whole charade, decried it as he witnessed it play out, and endured the personal pains of its tragic conclusion. It is no wonder he published more voluminous and vociferous attacks on inflation than anyone else of the period.

Both Webster and Witherspoon offered solutions to the debt crisis, though differing. Webster proposed for States to survey and auction all unsettled lands, the proceeds going to pay off the debts and beyond. With the stipulations that buyers would indeed settle what land they bought, bids would start as low as one silver dollar per acre—a bargain in any age. He calculated the amount of salable land at roughly 200 million acres, which even selling at the minimum bids would produce “a sum much more than sufficient to defray the whole public expenses of the Thirteen States, in a time of peace, and, of course, a large surplus to be expended on a navy, roads, canals, and many other improvements of our country, with a sufficient sum to be laid up for a time of war.”[30]

Witherspoon expressed lower expectations on the market for land than for capital first. In his last Speech on the Finances, he briefly offers a beginning of a remedy for the debt. He further urged the Congress to deal honestly on paying their interest payments. In fact, he argued, only by fulfilling their promises would Congress maintain credibility and thereby hope to gain access to future lenders they so badly desired. And he seemed confident in a robust market of willing lenders for anyone with good credit. Witherspoon seems to have understood the change taking place that had escaped many of his contemporaries. The view of wealth in America had shifted from that of the old country where high competition for property meant consistently high returns. In America, the vast supply of land to the west meant diluted demand and low prices. Consequently, men of means could earn greater returns in lending than in land.[31] Thus, Witherspoon argued, if only Congress would keep current with its obligations and secure its credit for the future, they would have no shortage of eager lenders to roll over their debt.

Witherspoon’s Legacy

Rev. John Rodgers said of Witherspoon: “Under his auspices have been formed a large proportion of the clergy of our church; and to his instructions, America owes many of her most distinguished patriots and legislators.”[32] This could even be an understatement. Counts vary depending upon the source, but just on the political side Witherspoon’s tutelage produced dozens of judges, including three Supreme Court Justices, dozens again of Senators and Congressmen, as well as one each a President and Vice President, and a handful of Cabinet Members. The most famous of these, by all accounts, was the later President James Madison.

Witherspoon was quite conscious of his powerful position, and advertised the fact in a 1772 letter to interested authorities back in Scotland. Princeton, Witherspoon noted, sat equidistant between the powerful cities of New York and Philadelphia so that he had a good knowledge of and access to both, and thus could boast of “a very considerable connection with many gentlemen of weight in all the provinces.”[33] More importantly, he anticipated his legacy of great influence in high places:

There are now under my care many who in a very short time will be at the head of affairs in their several provinces, and I have already and shall continue to temper the spirit of liberty, which breathes high in their country, with just sentiments, not only of loyalty to our excellent sovereign, in which they do not seem to be defective, but with a love of order and an aversion to that outrage and sedition into which the spirit of liberty when not reined is sometimes apt to degenerate.[34]

Perhaps no single figure had as much influence over the minds of America’s framers. For this critical reason alone, the nature and content of Witherspoon’s worldview enters this conversation as a vital element. His legacy appears in the association of teacher and influential student, but more importantly remains in what he implanted in their minds, and that which a small group of men cemented into the legal and political nature of this country.

On the issue of worldview—encompasing all branches of philosophy and theology alike—Witherspoon displays conflicting tendencies. He is variously conservative and progressive, confessionalist and moderate, biblicist and rationalist, depending on the perspective, setting, and purpose of the moment. The same writer who could satirize “moderation” in his Ecclesiastical Characteristics would also envision moral philosophy conforming to the natural philosophical methods of Newton in order to “arrive at greater precision.”[35] He who attacked the influence of the Scottish enlightenment philosophers—David Hume, Francis Hutcheson—in the Church, would nevertheless infuse his own thinking with their “Common Sense” principles, and parallel to recommending Newton for moral philosophy would refer the Scottish Common Sense philosopher James Beattie on Truth.[36] Yet in almost the same breath would declare, “There is nothing certain or valuable in moral philosophy, but what is perfectly coincident with scripture.”[37] Despite such a confession, Enlightenment philosophy features so apparently throughout his work that most scholars see him as a turning point for philosophy at Princeton, if not America in general.[38] The decorated American Historian Gordon S. Wood went to so far as to call Witherspoon a “Philosophe.”[39]

In political theory, Witherspoon pushed heavily towards strong centralized government, and thus would favor the Federalists, Hamilton and Madison, over the more liberty-minded Anti-Federalists. Witherspoon coupled his firm grasp of the knowledge of money with a desire for central government to have a firm grasp of control over it. “In the information of the original confederation, he complained of the jealousy and ambition of the individual states, which were not willing to entrust the general government with adequate powers for the common interest.”[40] Perhaps owing to his aforementioned interests related to the College, he despised the weakness of a Congress which could only beg States in regard to measures of legislation:

He particularly remonstrated against the tardy, inefficient and faithless manner of providing for the public exigencies and debts by requisition on the several states. He insisted on the propriety and necessity, of the government of the union holding in its own hands the entire regulation of commerce, and the revenues that might be derived from that source. These he contended would be adequate to all the wants of the United States, in a season of peace.[41]

We are left only to wonder why the Reverend expected the same fallen and ambitious men, once given greater or even total control, suddenly to turn dependable and faithful in all the financial transactions they had heretofore ruined with less power. Power, after all, does not sanctify.

At the College, Witherspoon taught his political philosophy in a course with a reading list grueling to even the ablest student. The fifteen books listed for that sole course included the well-established classics by Grotius, Puffendorf, Hobbes, Machiavelli, Locke, Montesquieu, Hume, and Witherspoon’s favorite nemesis from whom he learned and borrowed so much, Francis Huctheson.[42] Among the readers, an avid 18-year-old James Madison digested the course and finished his four-year degree in two. He stayed several months further in devotion to the teaching of his master, and would seek his consultation for years to come.[43]

Himself molded by Witherspoon’s enlightened course, Madison in turn framed the Constitution in his mentor’s image. The system gave lip-service to powers “reserved to the States,” but in no time proved to be a system geared more for centralized control. The history of the nation subsequently has reflected this in progressive (and sometimes violent) advances of “the Union” over against anything reserved to the States. Corresponding with this “progress” we have witnessed a waning of localism and individual liberties.

And this transformation did not take decades or centuries to develop. As we saw, the serpent of economic tyranny arose, many-headed, while really even before Independence had been declared. Political tyranny followed, again, nearly as close behind the Constitution. John Marshall, Secretary of State under Adams, knowing he was headed for the Supreme Court, set up a court case for himself near the end of his term. His successor as Secretary was his political ally, fellow Nationalist, James Madison, who essentially had nothing to do with the case bearing his name, Marbury v. Madison (1803), but approved of the outcome: Marshall overruled Congress while establishing the doctrine of “judicial review” by which the Courts have subsequently done so multiple times. The same Court, same Justice, same judicial review, denied States’ rights and imposed unelected, self-interested bankers to rule a national bank in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819). Other parts of that same decision have since been used to establish the idea of a “living Constitution,” which would be, in effect, no Constitution at all. All this, built upon Witherspoon’s view of centralized political power, enshrined in Madison’s Constitutional theory, and allied to Nationalistic interests. Madison created and fed the monster that has devoured the sons of liberty ever since.

On the issue of money, however, Madison learned well his master’s lessons. Being himself of the gentry “lending” class, Madison condemned the paper as “unjust, pernicious, and unconstitutional. It was bad for commerce, it was bad for morality, and it was bad for society: it destroyed ‘confidence between man and man.’”[44] Unfortunately, his political theory overcame his economic and the two have sunk together. If Pelatiah Webster was correct to note that the whole Continental charade proved the “absurdity of all attempts to fix the value of money by a law, or any other methods of compulsion,” how much more does this to apply to all values of human society including the nature of civil power and authority. It is the decentralized forces of the market in which crises find their quickest, least painful (though they may still be painful), and most honest remedies. When men attempt to centralize control in high places, they inevitably created larger crises for longer periods of time than would have been necessary. What Witherspoon and his followers applied in word to Money, they should have applied in practice to power as well. The fateful Continental dollar is but a symbol of the millions of boasted, counterfeited, devalued, empty, unfulfilled, and disastrous promises made by human governments throughout history.

Conclusion

Pelatiah Webster correctly noted how quietly the Continental gave up the ghost: “it expired without one groan or struggle; and I believe, of all things which ever suffered dissolution since life was first given to the creation, this mighty monster died the least lamented.”  Webster did not, however, necessarily interpret that silence in its fullness. Yes, no one wept at its passing, no mobs cried out, “Give us more! Give us more!” But neither did they shout, “Good riddance!” or “Never again!” Perhaps even worse, they do not seem to have educated their children to say, “Never again,” for the history of monetary inflation has provided a repeating act in U.S. history, as have price controls, legal tender laws, and the whole regular cast of economic tyrannies—and these threaten us as pointedly as ever today. For this reason alone, Witherspoon’s essays and speeches on Money add a resounding and penetrating voice to that still too frequent silence. Witherspoon’s sense and experience from over two decades past can help educate us today on the Nature and Use of Money, and help us educate our children to begin a new refrain of “Not now, and Never again.”

And if WItherspoon were here today, despite his other political flaws, I suspect he would join me in saying, “End the Fed.”

1. In what follows, I am heavily indebted to the massive and definitive work of Edwin Vieira, Jr., Pieces of Eight: The Monetary Powers and Disabilities of the United States Constitution, 2 vol., 2^nd edition (Fredericksburg, VA: Sheridan Books, Inc., 2002), 1:81–90. I have, however, changed his convention of “* * *” for an ellipsis to standard. [↩]
2. See Pelatiah Webster, “Scales of Depreciation of Continental Money,” Political Essays On the Nature and Operation of Money, Public Finances and Other Subjects (New York: Burt Franklin, 1969 [1791]), 501–502. [↩]
3. Quoted in Vieira, Pieces of Eight, 82–83. [↩]
4. Quoted in Vieira, Pieces of Eight, 83. [↩]
5. Quoted in Vieira, Pieces of Eight, 83. [↩]
6. Pelatiah Webster, “Remarks on the Resolution of Council Of the 2d of May, 1781, for raising the Exchange to 175 Continental dollars for 1 hard,” Political Essays On the Nature and Operation of Money, Public Finances and Other Subjects, 174n. [↩]
7. William B. Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, 1620–1789, 2 vol. (New York: Hilary House Publishers, Ltd., 1963 [1890]), 2:797. [↩]
8. Pelatiah Webster, “Remarks on the Resolution of Council Of the 2d of May, 1781, for raising the Exchange to 175 Continental dollars for 1 hard,” Political Essays On the Nature and Operation of Money, Public Finances and Other Subjects, 173n. [↩]
9. Pelatiah Webster, “Remarks on the Resolution of Council Of the 2d of May, 1781, for raising the Exchange to 175 Continental dollars for 1 hard,” Political Essays On the Nature and Operation of Money, Public Finances and Other Subjects, 172. [↩]
10. Pelatiah Webster, “Remarks on the Resolution of Council Of the 2d of May, 1781, for raising the Exchange to 175 Continental dollars for 1 hard,” Political Essays On the Nature and Operation of Money, Public Finances and Other Subjects, 172. [↩]
11. Pelatiah Webster, “Remarks on the Resolution of Council Of the 2d of May, 1781, for raising the Exchange to 175 Continental dollars for 1 hard,” Political Essays On the Nature and Operation of Money, Public Finances and Other Subjects, 173. [↩]
12. Vieira refers to this case in, Pieces of Eight, 88. He considers the whole case at 391–410. [↩]
13. Quoted in Vieira, Pieces of Eight, 83. [↩]
14. Quoted in Vieira, Pieces of Eight, 83. [↩]
15. Quoted in Vieira, Pieces of Eight, 84. [↩]
16. Quoted in Vieira, Pieces of Eight, 84. [↩]
17. Pelatiah Webster, “Scales of Depreciation of Continental Money,” Political Essays, 502. [↩]
18. Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, 1620–1789, 2:802. [↩]
19. Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, 1620–1789, 2:804. [↩]
20. Quoted in Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, 1620–1789, 2:799. [↩]
21. Quoted in Vieira, Pieces of Eight, 85. [↩]
22. Quoted in Vieira, Pieces of Eight, 85. [↩]
23. Pelatiah Webster, “Scales of Depreciation of Continental Money,” Political Essays On the Nature and Operation of Money, Public Finances and Other Subjects (New York: Burt Franklin, 1969 [1791]), 502. [↩]
24. Pelatiah Webster, “Remarks on the Resolution of Council Of the 2d of May, 1781, for raising the Exchange to 175 Continental dollars for 1 hard,” Political Essays On the Nature and Operation of Money, Public Finances and Other Subjects, 175n. [↩]
25. See John Rodgers, “The Faithful Servant Rewarded: A Sermon,” in The Works of the Rev. John Witherspoon, 4 vol., 2^nd Ed. (Philadelphia: William W. Woodward, 1802), 1:37nb. The sentiment is repeated by Charles A. Goodrich, Lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence (Hartford: R. G. H. Huntingdon, 1842), 217–218, and Varnum Lansing Collins, “Introduction,” in Lectures on Moral Philosophy, ed. by Varnum Lansing Collins (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1912), xv, who clearly depend on Rodgers for their information without attribution. [↩]
26. John Rodgers, “The Faithful Servant Rewarded: A Sermon,” in The Works of the Rev. John Witherspoon, 1:37nb. [↩]
27. John Rodgers, “The Faithful Servant Rewarded: A Sermon,” in The Works of the Rev. John Witherspoon, 1:37. [↩]
28. John Rodgers, “The Faithful Servant Rewarded: A Sermon,” in The Works of the Rev. John Witherspoon, 1:37nb. [↩]
29. See Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), 251–252. [↩]
30. Pelatiah Webster, “An Essay on the Extent and Value of Our Western Unlocated Lands, and the Proper Method of Disposing of them, so as to gain the greatest possible Advantage from them,” Political Essays On the Nature and Operation of Money, Public Finances and Other Subjects, 493. [↩]
31. Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), 68–70. [↩]
32. John Rodgers, “The Faithful Servant Rewarded: A Sermon,” in The Works of the Rev. John Witherspoon, 4 vol., 2^nd Ed. (Philadelphia: William W. Woodward, 1802), 1:35. [↩]
33. David Walker Woods, Jr., John Witherspoon (London and Edinburgh: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1906), 148. [↩]
34. David Walker Woods, Jr., John Witherspoon, 148–149. [↩]
35. John Witherspoon, Lectures on Moral Philosophy, ed. by Varnum Lansing Collins (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1912), 140. [↩]
36. Spelled “Beatty” in Lectures on Moral Philosophy, 141. [↩]
37. John Witherspoon, Lectures on Moral Philosophy, 140. [↩]
38. Varnum Lansing Collins, “Introduction,” in Lectures on Moral Philosophy, xxi. [↩]
39. Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), 219. [↩]
40. John Rodgers, “The Faithful Servant Rewarded: A Sermon,” in The Works of the Rev. John Witherspoon, 4 vol., 2^nd Ed. (Philadelphia: William W. Woodward, 1802), 1:37. [↩]
41. John Rodgers, “The Faithful Servant Rewarded: A Sermon,” in The Works of the Rev. John Witherspoon, 4 vol., 2^nd Ed., 1:37nc. [↩]
42. Dennis F. Thompson, “The Education of a Founding Father. The Reading List for John Witherspoon’s Course in Political Theory, as Taken by James Madison,” Political Theory 4/4 (Nov. 1976): 523–529. [↩]
43. Dennis F. Thompson, “The Education of a Founding Father. The Reading List for John Witherspoon’s Course in Political Theory, as Taken by James Madison,” Political Theory 4/4 (Nov. 1976): 523. [↩]
44. Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, 251. [↩]