others, on the 30th. It also stimulated the Massachusetts Assembly to issue letters of marque and reprisal, and to pass an act establishing a court to try and condemn all captures made from the enemy, by the privateers and armed vessels of that Colony.

In the autumn of this year, therefore, there were two classes of armed vessels cruising in the waters of Massachusetts: one consisting of those sailing under the continental authority, and the other consisting of those sailing under the authority of the Massachusetts Assembly. Captures were made by each, and some of those sailing under the continental authority were quite successful. Captain Manly, commanding the Lee, took, in the latter part of November, a valuable prize, with a large cargo of arms, ammunition, and military tools; and several other captures followed before any provision had been made for their condemnation, a business which was thus thrown entirely upon the hands of General Washington.

The court established by the Legislature of Massachusetts, at its session in the autumn of 1775, for the trial and condemnation of all captures from the enemy, was enabled to take cognizance only of captures made by vessels fitted out by the Province, or by citizens of the Province. As the cruisers fitted out at the continental expense did not come under this law, General Washington early in November called the attention of Congress to the necessity of establishing a court for the trial of prizes made by con

tinental authority. On the 25th of November, the Congress passed resolves ordering all trials of prizes to be held in the court of the colony into which they should be brought, with a right of appeal to Congress. But these resolves do not seem to have been, for a considerable period of time, communicated to General Washington; for, during the months of November, December, and January, he supposed it to be necessary for him to attend personally to the adjudication of prizes made by continental vessels, and it was not until the early part of February that the receipt of the resolves of Congress led to a resort to the jurisdiction of the admiralty court of Massachusetts. When, however, this was done, an irreconcilable difference was found to exist between the resolves of Congress and the law of the Colony respecting the proceedings; the trials were stopped for a long time, to enable the General Court of Massachusetts to alter their law, so as to make it conform to the resolves; and in

relative to captures; saying, "You cannot conceive how I am plagued on this head, and how impossible it is for me to hear and determine upon matters of this sort, when the facts, perhaps, are only to be ascertained at ports forty, fifty, or more miles distant, without bringing the parties here [Cambridge] at great trouble and expense. At any rate, my time will not allow me to be a competent judge of this business." Ibid., III. 217.

the mean while, many of the captors, weary of the law's delay, applied, without waiting for the decisions, for leave to go away, which General Washington granted.1 As late as the 25th of April, 1776, there had been no trials of any of the prizes brought into Massachusetts Bay. At that date, General Washington wrote to the President of Congress, from New York, that some of the vessels which he had fitted out were laid up, the crews being dissatisfied because they could not obtain their prize-money; that he had appealed to the Congress on the subject; and that, if a summary way of proceeding were not resolved on, it would be impossible to have the continental vessels manned. At this time Captain Manly and his crew had not received their share of the valuable prize taken by them in the autumn previous.2

Another remarkable defect in the revolutionary government was found in the mode in which it undertook to supply the means of defraying the public expenses. It was a government entirely without revenues of any kind; for, in constituting the Congress, the colonies had not clothed their delegates with power to lay taxes, or to establish imposts. At the time when hostilities were actually commenced, the commerce of the country was almost totally annihilated; so that if the Congress had possessed power to derive a revenue from commerce, little could

have been obtained for a long period after the commencement of the war. But the power did not exist; money in any considerable quantity could not be borrowed at home; the expedient of foreign loans had not been suggested; and consequently the only remaining expedient to which the Congress could resort was, like other governments similarly situated, to issue paper money. The mode in which this was undertaken to be done was, in the first instance, to issue two millions of Spanish milled dollars, in the form of bills, of various denominations, from one dollar to eight dollars each, and a few of twenty dollars, designed for circulation as currency. The whole number of bills which made up the sum of $2,000,000 was 403,800.1 The next emission amounted to $1,000,000, in bills of thirty dollars each, and was ordered on the 25th of July. When the bills of the first emission were prepared, it would seem to have been the practice to have them signed by a committee of the members; but this was found so inconvenient, from the length of time during which it withdrew the members from the other business of Congress, that, when the second emission

1 This was the emission ordered on the 23d of June, 1775. There were forty-nine thousand bills of each denomination from one dollar to eight dollars, inclusive, and eleven thousand eight hundred bills of the denomination of twenty dollars. The form of the bills was as follows (Journals, I. 126):

No.

CONTINENTAL CURRENCY.

Dollars. This Bill entitles the Bearer to receive Spanish milled Dollars, or the value thereof in Gold or Silver, according to the Resolutions of the Congress, held at Philadelphia on the 10th day of May, A. D. 1775. 2 Journals, I. 177.

was ordered, a committee of twenty-eight citizens of Philadelphia was appointed for the purpose, and the bills were ordered to be signed by any two of them.1 At this time, no continental Treasurers had been appointed.2

Such a clumsy machinery was poorly adapted to the supply of a currency demanded by the pressing wants of the army and of the other branches of the public service. The signers of the bills were extremely dilatory in their work. In September, 1775, the paymaster and commissary, at Cambridge, had not a single dollar in hand, and they had strained their credit, for the subsistence of the army, to the utmost; the greater part of the troops were in a state not far from mutiny, in consequence of the deduction which had been made from their stated allowance; and there was imminent danger, if the evil were not soon remedied, and greater punctuality observed, that the army would absolutely break up. In November, General Washington deemed it highly desirable to adopt a system of advanced pay, but the unfortunate state of the military chest rendered it impossible. There was not cash sufficient to pay the troops for the months of October and November. Through the months of December and January, the signing of the bills did not keep pace with the demands of the army, notwithstanding General Washington's urgent remonstrances; and in February his

1 Journals, I. 126, 177. The signers of the bills were allowed a commission of one dollar and one

third of a dollar on each thousand of the bills signed by them. Ibid.

2 Ante, p. 35.