Daily Nashville Patriot

Origin of Paper Money.

The Count de Tendilla, while besieged by the Moors in the fortress of Alhambra, was destitute of gold and silver wherewith to pay his soldiers, who began to murmur, as they had not the means purchasing the necessaries of life from the people of the town. "In this dilemma," says the historian an, "what does this most sagacious commander do? He takes a number of little morsels of paper, on which he inscribes various sums, large and small and signs them with his own hand and name. These did he give to the soldiery, in earnest of their pay 'How,' you will say. 'are soldiers to be paid with scraps of paper?' Even so, and well paid, too, as I will presently make manifest, for the good Count issued a proclamation, ordering the inhabitants to take these morsels of paper for the full amount inscribed thereon, promising to redeem them at a future time with gold and silver Thus, by subtle and most miraculous alchemy, did this cavalier turn worthless paper into precious gold and silver and make his late impoverished army abound in money." The historian adds, "The Count de Tendilla redeemed his promises like a loyal knight; and this miracle, as it appeared in the eyes of the worthy Agapida, is the first instance on record of paper money which has since spread throughout the civilized world the most unbounded opulence.

This happened in 1484; and thus we see that paper money, notwithstanding all the maledictions which have been bestowed upon it by the ignorant, the unbelieving and the faithless, was the adjunct of the invention of printing, the discovery of the western world, the Protestant Reformation, and the increased impulse given to civilization, industry and learning. The more intelligent and prosperous a people the more it has abounded; and though it has, like all the other attributes of civilization and liberty, been occasionally abused and degenerated into excessive license, yet the good it has effected has outweighed a hundred fold all the evils, and from the rashest and wildest accelerated stages of its progress, we have never been driven any where near the point from which the forced and premature march began. It needs wise regulation, like personal liberty and political right, and like these last it can be subjected to the despotic control of no governmental action among a free and enlightened people."