DATE: July 22, 1826

TOWN: Plymouth, MA

SOURCE: Old Colony Memorial and Plymouth County Adviser

"New Kind of Money"

Every man desires money, because with money he can procure whatever he desires; shape of money could readily obtain currency, no matter what its intrinsic worth. Only give it the shape of a bank note, let it be printed with copper plate on silk paper, with vignettes and die-work, and the silly multitude will cheerfully exchange for it their labor or the products of their labor. Even those who are convinced of the utter worthlessness of the paper, will take it, because they intend not to keep it, but to pass it away to others before the explosion which they know must occur sooner or later.

This disposition of mind is strikingly illustrated by an anecdote, recently told us by a gentleman of this city. He was traveling in the interior during the late war, and to try the whole extent of public credulity, he took the envelope from a box of quack medicine called Lee's Pills, or Lee's Antibilious Pills, and cut it up in pieces about the size of the changes notes then in circulation, making the words, 12 1/2 cents, or 6 1/4 cents, in large letters on the margin. The envelopes in question are curiously configured, so as to resemble die-work when viewed from a distance, but there was no vignettes, no "We promise to pay: nor any of the other customary ornaments of our bank notes. What, "said the people, on the paper being presented to them, "is this?" "Oh!" replied the Philadelphian, "it is a new kind of money, lately invented in New England." It was enough. Tavern keepers and toll gatherers pocketed the paper without further scrutiny, giving the necessary change in return, and if our travelers had a little conscience as the directors of certain paper-mints we could mention, he might have defrayed part of the expenses of his journey with this new circulation medium.

Perhaps the reader will say that, after all, these little pieces of the quack medicine envelope had quite as much intrinsic value as three fourths of the paper which forms the circulating medium of the country. That is a delicate question, on which we beg to decline expressing an opinion. Philad. Gaz.

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