ey would cut
it in pieces before your face; but they as often got it without that
ceremony, and so made what wicked shifts they could to get it off again,
and many times did put it off for current money, after they had bought
it for a trifle.

Thirdly, by this fraud, perhaps, the same piece of money might, several
years after, come into your hands again, after you had sold it for a
trifle, and so you might lose by the same shilling two or three times
over, and the like of other people; but if men were obliged to demolish
all the counterfeit money they take, and let it go no farther, they they
would be sure the fraud could go no farther, nor would the quantity be
ever great at a time; for whatever quantity the false coiners should at
any time make, it would gradually lessen and sink away, and not a mass
of false and counterfeit coin appear together, as was formerly the case,
and which lost the nation a vast sum of money to call in.

It has been the opinion of some, that a penalty should be inflicted upon
those who offered any counterfeit money in payment; but besides that,
there is already a statute against uttering false money, knowing it to
be such. If any other or farther law should be made, either to enforce
the statute, or to have new penalties added, they would still fall into
the same difficulties as in the act.

1. That innocent men would suffer, seeing many tradesmen may take a
piece of counterfeit money in tale with other money, and really and
_bona fide_ not know it, and so may offer it again as innocently as they
at first took it ignorantly; and to bring such into trouble for every
false shilling which they might offer to pay away without knowing it,
would be to make the law be merely vexatious and tormenting to those
against whom it was not intended, and at the same time not to meddle
with the subtle crafty offender whom it was intended to punish, and who
is really guilty.

2. Such an act would be difficultly executed, because it would still be
difficult to know who did knowingly utter false money, and who did not;
which is the difficulty, indeed, in the present law--so that, upon the
whole, such a law would no way answer the end, nor effectually discover
the offender, much less suppress the practice. But I am not upon
projects and schemes--it is not the business of this undertaking.

But a general act, obliging all tradesmen to suppress counterfeit money,
by refusing to put it off again, after they kne