Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete eBook
Washington Irving
Here was a blow at public prosperity! All those
who speculated on the rise and fall of this fluctuating
currency found their calling at an end; those, too,
who had hoarded Indian money by barrels full, found
their capital shrunk in amount; but, above all, the
Yankee traders, who were accustomed to flood the market
with newly-coined oyster-shells, and to abstract Dutch
merchandise in exchange, were loud-mouthed in decrying
this “tampering with the currency.”
It was clipping the wings of commerce; it was checking
the development of public prosperity; trade would be
at an end; goods would moulder on the shelves; grain
would rot in the granaries; grass would grow in the
marketplace. In a word, no one who has not heard
the outcries and howlings of a modern Tarshish, at
any check upon “paper money,” can have
any idea of the clamor against Peter the Headstrong
for checking the circulation of oyster-shells.
In fact, trade did shrink into narrower channels;
but then the stream was deep as it was broad.
The honest Dutchman sold less goods; but then they
got the worth of them, either in silver and gold, or
in codfish, tinware, apple-brandy, Weathersfield onions,
wooden bowls, and other articles of Yankee barter.
The ingenious people of the east, however, indemnified
themselves in another way for having to abandon the
coinage of oyster-shells, for about this time we are
told that wooden nutmegs made their first appearance
in New Amsterdam, to the great annoyance of the Dutch
housewives.
NOTE.
From a manuscript record of the province
(Lib, N.Y. Hist, Soc.).—“We
have been unable to render your inhabitants wiser,
and prevent their being, further imposed upon,
than to declare, absolutely and peremptorily,
that henceforward seawant shall be bullion—not
longer admissable in trade, without any value, as it
is indeed. So that every one may be upon his
guard to barter no longer away his wares and merchandise
for these baubles; at least not to accept them
at a higher rate, or in a larger quantity, than
as they may want them in their trade with the savages.
“In this way your English [Yankee]
neighbors shall no longer be enabled to draw the
best wares and merchandise from our country for
nothing; the beavers and furs not excepted. This
has, indeed, long since been insufferable; although
it ought chiefly to be imputed to the imprudent
penuriousness of our own merchants and inhabitants,
who, it is to be hoped, shall, through the abolition
of this seawant, become wiser and more prudent.
“27th January, 1662,
“Seawant falls into
disrepute; duties to be paid in silver coin.”
