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justice to discharge the debtor who has made that tender.But no positive law can oblige a person who sells goods, andwho is at liberty to sell or not to sell, as he pleases, to acceptof a shilling as equivalent to a guinea in the price of them.Notwithstanding any regulation of this kind, it appeared bythe course of exchange with Great Britain , that a hundredpounds sterling was occasionally considered as equivalent,in some of the colonies, to a hundred and thirty pounds, andin others to so great a sum as eleven hundred pounds cur-rency; this difference in the value arising from the differencein the quantity of paper emitted in the different colonies, andin the distance and probability of the term of its final dis-charge and redemption.

No law, therefore, could be more equitable than the act ofparliament, so unjustly complained of in the colonies, whichdeclared that no paper currency to be emitted there in timecoming, should be a legal tender of payment.

Pennsylvania was always more moderate in its emissionsof paper money than any other of our colonies. Its papercurrency accordingly is said never to have sunk below thevalue of the gold and silver which was current in the colonybefore the first emission of its paper money. Before thatemission, the colony had raised the denomination of its coin,and had, by act of assembly, ordered five shillings sterling topass in the colony for six and three-pence, and afterwardfor six and eight-pence. A pound colony currency, therefore,even when that currency was gold and silver, was more thanthirty per cent, below the value of a pound sterling, and whenthat currcucy was turned into paper, it was seldom muchmore than thirty per cent, below that value. The pretencefor raising the denomination of the coin, was to prevent theexportation of gold and silver, by making equal quantities ofthose metals pass for greater sums in the colony than theydid in the mother country. It was found, however, that theprice of all goods from the mother country rose exactly inproportion as they raised the denomination of their coin, sothat their gold and silver were exported as fast as ever.

The paper of each colony being received in the paymentof the provincial taxes, for the full value for which it hadbeen issued, it necessarily derived from this use some addi-tional value, over and above what it would have had, from thereal or supposed distance of the term of its final discharge,and redemption. This additional value was greater or less,