IN COLONIAL times there were, broadly speaking, two types of paper money: the bill of credit and the loan-office bill. The more common was the bill of credit, which is similar to the more recent Civil War greenback-simply inconvertible money issued to pay the expenses of a military expedition or even the current costs of government. Provision was usually made for the retirement of this money by taxes over a period of years, but all too often new emergencies arose or were thought to arise, with the result that the bills had both longer life and lower purchasing power than was originally intended. The less common variety of paper money was the loan-office bill or land-bank note, which bears some resemblance to a modern bank note. Loan offices and land banks were the nearest things to a modern bank that existed in Colonial America. The loan offices did not receive deposits or discount drafts, but they did lend up to a maximum amount in loanoffice bills on real estate security. The land-bank idea appears to have had its origin in William Potter's book, The Key to Wealth, published in London in i650.' Private land banks were planned and perhaps tried on a small scale in South Carolina and Massachusetts during the last quarter of the seventeenth century.2 Barbados tried the scheme without success in I7o6.3 An attempt in South Carolina in I7I2 to finance an expedition against the Tuscarora Indians by establishing a public land bank or loan office was a dismal failure in practice but apparently a great success in theory,