Many people refused to accept the base sewant until, in the following September, the Council enacted " that the base strung sewant should be received by every one without distinction, in payment for small daily and necessary commodities in housekeeping, and that it should be current as follows: For twelve guilders or under, all may be paid in base strung sewant ; from twelve to twenty-four guilders, half base and half good strung sewant; and in larger sums agreeably to the agreement between buyer and seller." In 1658 the rate was again altered to eight white and four black of sewant for one stuyver. The colony was from a superabundant and depreciated which was intrinsically worthless. Beahad an actual value apart from that

the good suffering currency, vers, which

which legislation could place upon them, appreciated until they were rated at sixteen guilders each ; and, as a matter of course, provisions and household necessaries followed the upward movement of the currency which kept anything like an even ratio with real money. Shop-keepers, tapsters, brewers, bakers, grocers and workingmen charged a difierence of eighty, ninety or a hundred per cent, between sewant and beaver in taking pay for their goods or their labor. The Council struggled bravely to enhance the value of the sewant by resorting to the fiction that values can be controlled by arbitrary enactment. Its next law (November 11, 1658) was " that the brewers, tapsters, bakers, and other shopkeepers and common grocers, should sell the daily