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Book, page 140 / 313 more money was to be borrowed, and taxation was dreaded by both political parties more than disgrace. The currency of the State banks was well-nigh worthless, but it constituted nearly the only circulating medium in the State. In the middle of August the Governor, Auditor, and Treasurer issued a circular forbidding the payment of State taxes in this depreciated paper. This order was naturally taken by the Whigs as indicating on the part of these officers a keener interest in the integrity of their salaries than in the public welfare, and it was therefore severely attacked in all the opposition newspapers of the State. The sharpest assault it had to endure, however, was in a communication, dated August 27, and printed in the "Sangamo Journal" of September 2, not only dissecting the administration circular with the most savage satire, but covering the Auditor with merciless personal ridicule. It was written in the dialect of the country, dated from the "Lost Townships," and signed "Rebecca," and purported to come from a farmer widow of the county, who expressed in this fashion her discontent with the evil course of affairs. Shields was a man of inordinate vanity and a corresponding irascibility. He was for that reason an irresistible mark for satire. Through a long life of somewhat conspicuous public service, he never lost a certain tone of absurdity which can only be accounted for by the qualities we have mentioned. Even his honorable wounds in battle, while they were productive of great public applause and political success, gained him scarcely less ridicule than praise. He never could refrain from talking of them himself, having none of Coriolanus's repugnance in that respect, and for that reason was a constant target for newspaper wits. After Shields returned from the Mexican war, with his laurels still green, and at the close of the canvass which had made him Senator, he wrote an incredible letter to Judge Breese, his principal competitor, in which he committed the gratuitous folly of informing him that "he had sworn in his heart [if Breese had been elected] that he should never have profited by his success; and depend upon it," he added, in the amazing impudence of triumph, "I would have kept that vow, regardless of consequences. That, however, is now past, and the vow is
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