66 the Earl of Hillsborough One of His Ma'ty's Prin "cipal Secretaries of State." I have, upon this Occasion, had Recourse to the whole of my Correspondence, and cannot observe any one Letter of mine, which was in it's nature either necessary or proper to be laid entire before the Assembly; but if there were any that appeared to you fit to be communicated to them, you ought at least have acquainted me in your Letter with what you had done, and to have assigned Reasons for a Step that seems to have been an unwarrantable Deviation from your Duty, and a Disrespect to a Correspondence directed by The King Himself." The enclosed Order in Council contains His Majesty's Disallowance of the Act passed by you in June 1767, for making Provision for quartering His Majesty's Troops; and the Copy of the Report of the Board of Trade will inform you of the Reasons for such Disallowance; it only therefore remains for me to acquaint you, that I have, in consequence of this Order, received the King's Commands to signify to you, His Ma'ty's Disapprobation of your Conduct, in assenting to a Law contrary to an Act of Parliament, and this notwithstanding a Law of the same Nature, passed in 1766, had been before rejected by His Majesty in Council for the same Reason. It is a Matter of much Concern to me, to have had Occasion for Animadversion upon your Conduct in so many Instances; I can only say, that it is a part of my Duty that is very disagreeable to me; and that I shall be happy, by your Explanation of the motives of your Conduct, to find there has not been so just Grounds for it as I have too much Foundation to apprehend. As the Petition to His Ma'ty resolved upon by the Assembly of New Jersey and entered upon the printed 1 See post, under date of September 2, 1768. Minutes of their Proceedings transmitted by you, has not yet been presented to me to be laid before His Majesty, it gives me good Reason to hope that they may have seen the Error of their Conduct upon this Occasion, and that I shall not be under the disagreeable Necessity of laying before His Majesty, any Resolutions or Proceedings of His Assembly of New Jersey, of such a Nature as cannot but give His Majesty great Dissatisfaction, and must be rejected as being null and void, in consequence of the Act of Parliament of the 6th of His present Majesty. I am &ca HILLSBOROUGH. Letter from Gov. Franklin to the Earl of Hillsborough, relative to a bill passed by the Assembly for striking £100,000 in bills of credit, to which he, the Governor, had refused his assent, desiring instructions. [From P. R. O. America and West Indies, Vol. 173 (191).] BURLINGTON, August 24th 1768 Right Honble the Earl of Hillsborough My Lord, A Bill passed both the Council and Assembly, at the last Sessions, for Striking One hundred Thousand Pounds in Bills of Credit, and emitting the same on Loan: But as they had, contrary to the Act of Parliament, made the Money a legal Tender' (tho' I believe 1 The Assembly had doubtless taken this liberty because the friends of a legal tender paper currency had strong hopes of getting the restraining Act of Parliament repealed. Writing February 17, 1768, Benjamin Franklin informed his friend Joseph Galloway, of Pennsylvania, that he had had a long conversation on the subject with Lord Hillsborough, who said that if application were made for taking off the restraint as regarded Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York, as Franklin proposed, "it should have fair play; he would himself give it no sort of opposition.”—Franklin's not intentionally) and refus'd to add a Suspending Clause to the Bill, as my Instructions require, I deny'd my Assent to it. I besides expected that the Assembly would have appropriated some Part of the Interest to the Augmentation of Officers Salaries, which are scandalously low in this Province (as your Lordship may see by the enclosed Account of them); but they declin'd doing any Thing of the kind, tho' most of them cannot but acknowledge the Insufficiency of the Salaries, and that this would be the easiest Mode of raising Money on the People for the Support of Government. The whole of the Interest Money, after defraying the Expenses attending the Emission, was, by the Bill, to remain in the Treasury till apply'd to the support of Government, and to other publick Uses, by subsequent Acts of Assembly.—I wrote to your Lordship before, in my Letter N° 2, that I thought a reasonable Sum of Paper Currency would be of Service both to the Province, and to the Mother Country. The People here are so anxious Works, VII., 382, 430. Franklin was strongly in favor of a legal tender paper currency, with proper security, for use in the Colonies. "On the whole," said he, in 1764, when Parliament was about to enact the restraining bill, "no method has hitherto been formed to establish a medium of trade, in lieu of money, equal, in all its advantages, to bills of credit, founded on sufficient taxes for discharging it, or on land security of double the value, for repaying it at the end of the term, and in the meantime made a general legal tender. 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 in not a single instance prejudicial."--Works, II., 354. Even his strong, practical sense did not en. able him to foresee the evils invariably arising from the attempt to give a fictitious value, by legislative enactment, to that which has no value. A comprehensive explanation of the Colonial system of currency obtaining in New Jersey is given in a paper on "Taxes and Money in New Jersey before the Revolution," by R. Wayne Parker, published in the Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society for January, 1883. It may be interesting to mention, in connection with this note, that in a conversation in November, 1885, at his delightful home in Washington, the venerable historian, George Bancoft, informed the writer that he was then (although he had entered upon his eighty-sixth year) engaged on a history of paper currency in America, which he intended to be his final work, and hoped it might be instrumental in warning the people of the United States against the dangers of fiat money.-W. N.] about this matter, that they would not hesitate to take the Money, and mortgage their Estates for the Repayment of it with Interest, tho' it should not be made a legal Tender. Advantage should therefore, I think, be taken of this Disposition to bring them to make a more adequate Provision for the Officers of Government, unless indeed the Duties laid by the Acts of Parliament are supposed to render such a Measure unnecessary.— The Council have requested me to desire your Lordship's Sentiments on this Subject, and that you would be pleased to inform me whether His Majesty would have any Objection to my giving my Assent to a Bill for emitting a Hundred Thousand Pounds of Paper Currency on Loan, without a Suspending Clause, provided the Money is not made a legal Tender, and the Interest arising therefrom is appropriated to publick Purposes. I have the Honor to be, with the greatest respect, & most humble Servant WM FRANKLIN P. S. In the Hurry of making up my Dispatches, by the last Packet, I omitted sending your Lordship a printed Copy of the Laws, and a Part of the Privy Councils Minutes, mentioned in my Letter No 6. and therefore now send it herewith. Civil Establishment of New Jersey 1768 In Gov! Francklin's (N° 9) of 24 Aug 1768. The Salaries Annually granted to the Officers of the Government of New Jersey, amount to seventeen hundred and twenty five Pounds Currency, which at sixty Cent, the Medium of Exchange with Great Britain, amounts to £1075' Sterling, and is thus divided in Ster ling Money viz To the Governor To the Chief Justice To the second Justice of the Supreme Court To the third Justice of the Supreme Court To the Attorney General To one Treasurer residing at Amboy To one Treasurer residing at Burlington To the Clerk of the Council To the Agent residing at London Sterling per Ann. £750 93 15 31 5 31 5 18 15 25 25 18 15 62 10 12 10 To the Door Keeper of the Council 6 5 £1075 To the Clerk of the Circuits The Incidental Charges and daily Wages during the Attendance on Legislative Business are, To the Members of the Council, and of the Assembly, three shillings and nine pence each Day. To the Clerk of Assembly, five shillings Day To the Serjeant at Arms to the Council & the Assembly one shilling and ten pence P day To the Door Keeper of the Assembly two shillings day. To the Govornor for House Rent thirty seven Pounds ten shillings Pannum. The other incidental Charges are such as arise from the repair of five Barracks built at the Expence of the Colony, each capable to Contain three hundred Men, and the Allowance by Law to be made to the Troops from time to time quartered in them, which is altogether uncertain. Sixty per cent. of £1725 make £1035, instead of £!075. 2 At Burlington, Trenton, Ferth Amboy, New Brunswick and Elizabeth-Town.-N. J. Archives, IX., 576, note. |
