ied and prospered; for
the worse the current money became the more easily it was imitated.
During more than thirty years this evil had gone on increasing. At first
it had been disregarded; but it had at length become an insupportable
curse to the country. It was to no purpose that the rigorous laws
against coining and clipping were rigorously executed. At every session
that was held at the Old Bailey terrible examples were made. Hurdles,
with four, five, six wretches convicted of counterfeiting or mutilating
the money of the realm, were dragged month after month up Holborn Hill.
On one morning seven men were hanged and a woman burned for clipping;
But all was vain. The gains were such as to lawless spirits seemed more
than proportioned to the risks. Some clippers were said to have made
great fortunes. One in particular offered six thousand pounds for a
pardon. His bribe was indeed rejected; but the fame of his riches did
much to counteract the effect which the spectacle of his death was
designed to produce. [632] Nay the severity of the punishment gave
encouragement to the crime. For the practice of clipping, pernicious as
it was, did not excite in the common mind a detestation resembling
that with which men regard murder, arson, robbery, nay, even theft.
The injury done by the whole body of clippers to the whole society was
indeed immense; but each particular act of clipping was a trifle. To
pass a halfcrown, after paring a pennyworth of silver from it, seemed a
minute, an almost imperceptible, fault. Even while the nation was crying
out most loudly under the distress which the state of the currency had
produced, every individual who was capitally punished for contributing
to bring the currency into that state had the general sympathy on his
side. Constables were unwilling to arrest the offenders. Justices were
unwilling to commit. Witnesses were unwilling to tell the whole truth.
Juries were unwilling to pronounce the word Guilty. It was vain to tell
the common people that the mutilators of the coin were causing far more
misery than all the highwaymen and housebreakers in the island. For,
great as the aggregate of the evil was, only an infinitesimal part of
that evil was brought home to the individual malefactor. There was,
therefore, a general conspiracy to prevent the law from taking its
course. The convictions, numerous as they might seem, were few indeed
when compared with the offences; and the offenders who were co