The opinions of Franklin with regard to general political topics are always
acute and interesting, and, unlike the opinions of most great men, even the
greatest, are rarely, if ever, flecked by the errors of his time. In some
quarters, there has been a disposition to reproach him with being an
advocate of what since his day has come to be known in the United States as
rag or fiat money. The reproach loses sight of the fact that the currency
problems, with which he had to deal, did not turn upon the true respective
functions of paper and real money, under conditions that permit their
application to their several natural and proper uses. No such conditions
existed in America during the colonial period or the Revolutionary War.
There was no California, Alaska, Nevada, or Colorado then. "Gold and
Silver," Franklin said in 1767, in his _Remarks and Facts Concerning
American Paper Money_, "are not the Produce of _North-America_, which has
no Mines."