In Massachusetts between 1720-1790, soft money and inflation seems to have been seen as a good thing by the Boston Town Meeting and the embattled farmers. Hard money and deflation seems to have been the policy of the first the Crown and then the Federalists representing American, planters, coastal merchants and bankers.

See: Boston 1689-1776 by GB Warden; The Embattled Farmers by Lee Nathaniel Newcomer; Shays's Rebellion by Leonard Richards; and Shays Rebellion by David P. Szatmary.

Inflation was extremely low in most countries prior to the First World War. In Britain, according to the Bank of England's long-run historical datasets, the price level in 1660 was approximately the same as the price level in 1912 - so over a 250 year period there was zero inflation on average. However, year to year prices did fluctuate quite significantly - there's no inflation on average because they would go down as often as they would go up. The average price change in a year (averaging the absolute values of inflation) was around 5%, so prices would go up or down around 5% on average between years.

It depended on the monetary regime utilized at a given time. The most important thing to understand when thinking about this is the difference between a fixed and floating currency. A floating currency is what we have today, where our money is backed up only by its reputation. In a fixed monetary regime, the currency is tied to some item (ie gold). In a fixed monetary regime, since the value of currency is fixed at the value of gold, there will be very little change in long run prices.

That being said, if there is ever a shortage of gold causing an increase in the valuation of gold, this would cause deflation (this is what happened in the US in the late 1800s). Also, not to mention the impact that this has on the ability of a government to alleviate unemployment.