therefore, upon our roll over twenty-six years. During that time, so far as I am aware, Mr. Story made but one direct contribution to our Proceedings,1an extremely interesting metrical tribute to the late George Stillman Hillard. So far as I am aware, this contribution is in our record of Proceedings wholly exceptional in its character, and to me it strikes a peculiar and very touching note. In it a great number of those who were more or less contemporary with William W. Story, all of them distinguished, and nearly all members of this Society, are fittingly recalled. Most of them I myself remember; every one of them I believe is now long since dead. I here leave the subject with a hope that, at our next meeting, we may hear further from Professor Norton in connection with it. The votes proposed by the Council were adopted. Mr. Samuel Lothrop Thorndike, of Weston, was elected a Resident Member; and Signor Pasquale Villari, of Florence, Italy, was elected an Honorary Member. Mr. WORTHINGTON C. FORD spoke briefly of the very high cost of early books relating to American history, and of the impossibility for this Society to compete for them in the book auctions. - Mr. GAMALIEL BRADFORD made some remarks upon the new work of Mr. Andrew McFarland Davis upon Banking and Currency in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. In emitting bills of Public Credit, the first instance of such action by any government outside of China, they made the same mistake which has been made in every instance since, except one, that of confounding debt and currency. They wished to borrow capital for enterprises, and being nearly in a state of barter, they wished to provide a medium of exchange. If they had issued just enough paper money for this purpose and kept the amount down by a funded debt even at high rates of interest, they might have accomplished both purposes. They did try to make the same instrument serve both purposes with resulting disaster and bankruptcy. The next instance was that of our old confederation of States. There was no government which could create a 1 Proceedings, vol. xix. pp. 346–348. funded debt or obtain either men or money except by the voluntary action of the States. Of course their legal tender paper plunged rapidly into the abyss of bankruptcy. The French Revolution confiscated eight hundred millions of dollars worth of landed property belonging to the church and the nobles. If they had used this as a pledge for an organized funded debt on which they needed only to pay the interest, and so kept down the paper money, they might have weathered the storm. But the only thing they knew how to do was to offer the lands for sale, payable in assignats, which of course was a complete failure. Soon after England entered upon a twenty years' war with all Europe. She made the Bank of England note, practically if not in form, a government legal tender, and relied wholly upon it for money. During the whole period it never fell below fifteen per cent discount, and specie payments were resumed in four years after the battle of Waterloo. This great result was obtained by selling the funded debt at fifty cents on the dollar, -in other words, keeping debt and currency entirely separate. Coming to our Civil War, we find that at the outset the supply of money was wholly insufficient for carrying on the war. The first one hundred and fifty millions of greenbacks were a necessity, and if the amount had been kept down by selling bonds at the market value, would have done no harm. But Mr. Chase made the same old mistake of trying to kill two birds with one stone, and preferred to pour out inconvertible paper rather than sell bonds below par, till Congress refused to go beyond four hundred and fifty millions. The result was that the greenback sunk to about one-third of its face value, and foreigners bought at about forty-five per cent bonds which were selling at par at home. Mr. WORTHINGTON C. FORD then communicated the following paper: The Governor and Council of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, August, 1714-March, 1715. On August 1, 1714, Queen Anne died, after an illness which made her last years a period of unrest and court intrigue. In the Province of the Massachusetts-Bay this unrest had been reflected in the long and active administration of Governor Joseph Dudley. The discontent in the Province against Dud |