Sep 3, 2008

Oliver Ellsworth on paper money

This is a favorable moment to shut and bar the door against paper money. The mischief of the various experiments which have been made are now fresh in the public mind and have excited the disgust of all of the respectable parts of America.

~ Oliver Ellsworth, representative from Connecticut to the Constitutional Convention, subsequently Chief Justice of the Supreme Court

(Quoted in G. Edward Griffen, The Creature from Jekyll Island, page 315. Ellsworth was referencing various paper money schemes that were tried and failed during the War of Independence and in the period between the war and the beginning of the Constitutional Convention.)

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