HOW THE ISLANDERS DETERMINED TO BE AN HONEST AND FREE PEOPLE.
Next came the consideration of the laws regulating the exchanges and
the use of money. Some people wanted laws enacted that every person
should be obliged to sell and part with any thing he owned, provided
a nominal or real equivalent in what the State should declare money
should be offered him; and, also, that when any person had bought
commodities and services of another, and had promised to pay for them
after a time, he might fully discharge the obligation by tendering
that which the State said was money, no matter whether in the mean
time the persons in charge of the mint had, for any reasons, taken
out one-half the valuable gold in the coins, and substituted in its
place comparatively worthless lead.
But, to the honor of the islanders, these propositions met with little
favor. They said, we mean to be an honest and also a free people; and,
therefore, every one in buying or selling shall do exactly what he
has agreed to do; unless, by reason of some unforeseen or unavoidable
circumstances, he is absolutely unable to perform his agreement or
contract. And they said, further, that if any one receives commodities
and services, and promises to give, five years or five minutes
afterward, in return, an agreed-upon quality and quantity of gold,
wheat, cod-fish, or cabbages, it shall be considered, as in truth
it is, dishonest to attempt to discharge the obligation by offering
pig-iron in the place of gold, pease or beans in the place of wheat,
soft-shell crabs in the place of cod-fish, or pumpkins in the place
of cabbages; and any community which shall in any way sanction any
such evasion of the letter or spirit of its obligations can have no
rightful claim to call itself an honest, Christian people; and if any
community enacts and maintains laws compelling any person to receive
in exchange, or in pay for his services or products, something which
he did not agree to and would not otherwise receive, such a community
has no rightful claim to call itself a free community. The people
on the island, therefore, decided that they would allow the island
authorities to interfere with exchanges to this extent only: that the
medium of exchange and measure of values that they had adopted and
called a Friday, or a dollar, should always and under all circumstances
contain 25.8 grains of standard gold; that this standard should never
be departed from; and that although no one should be compelled to
use it, yet whenever any one talked about or promised to pay or give
money, without specifying whether the money should be wampum money,
bead money, cattle money, gold money, or any other particular kind of
money, the money issued by the acknowledged authorities of the island
should be understood and accepted as what was meant. In short, like
sensible men, the islanders concluded that as long as they maintained
in common use a real, good, and true money, which carried on its face
evidence (easily read and known of all men) of its value or purchasing
power, there was little use of cumbering up the statute-book with any
thing about legal tender. They would leave that to other people wiser
than they were, who desired to use money that would not circulate,
except it had some artificial power or agency back of it to make it go.
After this, every thing for a time pertaining to trade and commerce
went on very smoothly on the island. It is true there were bad persons
who obtained commodities and services on credit for which they never
intended to pay; careless and extravagant persons who bought more
than they were able to pay for; and foolish and oversanguine people
who, after having by labor and economy accumulated a good store of
commodities, exchanged them for shares in enterprises which never
could pay. And when people by one or more of such methods lost the
results of their hard labor and toil, they naturally felt depressed,
lost confidence in their fellow-men, and thought times and things
might be improved by turning all those in office out, and putting
new men in. But no one on the island ever for a moment imagined
that there was any way to honestly replace the money they had lost,
except by acquiring through industry and economy a new store of useful
commodities with which to buy money; and no one who ever had any thing
to sell which others in the community wanted, and were able to give
in return a fair equivalent, ever found himself in want of money or
a market; while, on the other hand, no one who had nothing to sell
which the community wanted or were able to pay for ever succeeded in
obtaining either money or a market.