The war too having put a stop to the
exportation of tobacco, there was a great accumulation of several
years' produce in all the public inspecting warehouses and private
stores of the planters. Arnold, Phillips, and Cornwallis, with
British troops, then entered and overran the country, burnt all the
inspecting and other stores of tobacco, to the amount of some hundred
ship-loads; all which might, on the return of peace, if it had not
been thus wantonly destroyed, have been remitted to British
creditors. But _these d -- d Virginians, why don't they pay their
debts?_
Paper money was in those times our universal currency. But, it
being the instrument with which we combated our enemies, they
resolved to deprive us of its use by depreciating it; and the most
effectual means they could contrive was to counterfeit it. The
artists they employed performed so well, that immense quantities of
these counterfeits, which issued from the British government in New
York, were circulated among the inhabitants of all the States, before
the fraud was detected. This operated considerably in depreciating
the whole mass, first, by the vast additional quantity, and next by
the uncertainty in distinguishing the true from the false; and the
depreciation was a loss to all and the ruin of many.
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