Of the state of the currency during the Revolutionary War, Mr. Winston says: The guardian, administration and official bonds indicate the depreciation of the cur rency. Let me cite a few instances: "At November term, 1781, Thomas Averit gives bond as guardian of his brother, in the sum of four hundred thousand pounds proclama tion. At this term the bond of the tax gath erer for Windsor district is fixed at five hun dred thousand pounds, current money, and they did not use the £ for pounds, but they spelled it out—p-o-u-n-d-s—as though they were the very rags of which the bills were made. . . The climax was reached when George Ryan, Esq., appeared at May term, 1782, and gave his sheriff's bond in five .million pounds, current money. The farce was complete; George Evans, John McGlauhan and Stev ens Gray qualified and were accepted on the bond. Then were we indeed the first Ameri can millionaires! The tavern rates show clearly the cheapness of the currency. At May term, 1780, the court fixed these rates as follows: For a hot dinner, of good provisions $12.50 Breakfast of tea or coffee, bread and butter. 6.00 Supper of meat 8.00 If of coffee or tea 6.00 Xight's lodging 2.OO For a gill of good West India rum 10.00 Country brandy, whiskey and taffey, per gill. 5.00 24 hours' pasturage for a horse 4.00
These prices vividly recall one other pe riod in our country's history, when it was re marked by a Confederate soldier to his com rade in March, 1865, that he would give a thousand dollars for the horse his friend was riding. "A thousand dollars the devil. said his friend, "I have just paid two thousand dollars to have him curried." THE opinion of Judge Emory Speer, de livered June 28, 1904, in the District Court of the United States for the Western Divi sion of the District of Georgia, in Jamison v. Wimbish, merits the commendation of all
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those members of the bar who believe in a humane system of criminal law. This action was a petition for a writ of habeas corpus brought in behalf of a respect able colored man who, "without any indict ment, accusation, or written charge of any kind having been preferred against him" and without trial by jury, had been sentenced by the City Recorder of Macón, Georgia, to a term of two hundred and ten days in the chaingang. The offense charged was drunkness and disorderly conduct. The case (to quote the opinion) "involves the question whether the Recorder of Macón can, without any sort of criminal pleading, and without the intervention of a jury, convict a citizen twice, for one violation of a minor municipal ordinance and sentence him to seven months at hard labor on the public chaingang, the punishment to be suffered in a branch of the State penitentiary. Here also is the question, can it be maintained in the light of the Constitution, that one man, under any form of procedure, devised or to be devised by local legislation, consign men, women and children to a chaingang for such trivial offenses as are within the jurisdiction of a ]x>lice magistrate?" The court held, in the first place, that the order that a person should serve a term in the chaingang was a sentence to infamous punishment. That this finding was justified is shown by the following description of the chaingang by the court: The sufferers wear the typical striped clothing of the penitcntary convict. Iron manacles are riveted upon their legs. These can be removed only by the use of the cold chisel. The irons on each leg are connected by chains. The coarse stripes, thick with the dust and grime of long torrid days of a semi-tropical summer, or encrusted with the icy mud of winter, are their sleeping clothes when they throw themselves on their pallets or straw in the common stockades at night. They wake, toil, rest, eat and sleep, to the never-ceasing clanking of the manacles and chains of this involuntary slavery. Their progress to and from their work is public,
