When the British merchants heard that some of the most prominent men in Virginia had sided with them in urging that an end be put to currency inflation, they were encouraged to renew their complaints to the Board of Trade. The Board, in turn, wrote Fauquier to urge the Assembly to give them satisfaction. So the Governor, on May 19, 1763, addressed the House, pointing out that common justice required that every man should receive full payment for debts due him. And the support of the public credit, so vital for a trading country like Virginia, made it absolutely necessary to redeem the paper in circulation at the dates fixed by law.[28]
The Burgesses responded by adding to the fund for sinking the paper money by laying additional taxes on slaves, wheel carriages, licenses, etc.[29] But they would not budge from their determination to keep all the notes legal tender. And they made a long and able reply to the Governor, drawn up by Charles Carter, Edmund Pendleton, Wythe, and Richard Henry Lee, justifying their proceedings and claiming that the merchants had no just grounds for complaint. In it they inserted a declaration of American rights which the British Ministry would have been wise to take to heart. Their dependence upon Great Britain they acknowledged as their greatest happiness and only security. But this was not the dependence of a conquered people, but of sons sent out to explore and settle a new world for the mutual benefit of themselves and their common parent. It was the dependence of the part upon the whole, which, by its admirable constitution, diffused a spirit of patriotism which made every citizen, however remote from the mother kingdom, zealous for the King and the public good.[30]
But the merchants were far from being satisfied, and a group in Glasgow sent another appeal to the Board of Trade. They thought that part of the trouble came from the ease with which paper money could be counterfeited. And they were sure that the hundreds of counterfeit notes, passing from hand to hand in Virginia, partly accounted for the enormous heights of exchange. But they supported the Assembly in continuing the legal tender clause. To take it off might make the currency debts "more fluctuating, uncertain, and less valuable." The only effectual remedy was to forbid further issues of paper money, to see that notes as they were brought into the treasury were duly burnt, to order that circulating notes bear five per cent interest, and to remedy any deficiency in the taxes.[31] When Parliament passed an act to prohibit future emissions in the colonies, they seemed satisfied.