part of trade among individuals is carried on by the same medium,
that is, by notes and drafts on one another, they, therefore, of all
people in the world, ought to endeavor to keep forgery out of sight,
and, if possible, not to revive the idea of it. It is dangerous to
make men familiar with a crime which they may afterwards practise to
much greater advantage against those who first taught them. Several
officers in the English army have made their exit at the gallows for
forgery on their agents; for we all know, who know any thing of
England, that there is not a more necessitous body of men, taking
them generally, than what the English officers are. They contrive to
make a show at the expense of the tailors, and appear clean at the
charge of the washer-women.

England, has at this time, nearly two hundred million pounds sterling
of public money in paper, for which she has no real property: besides
a large circulation of bank notes, bank post bills, and promissory
notes and drafts of private bankers, merchants and tradesmen. She has
the greatest quantity of paper currency and the least quantity of
gold and silver of any nation in Europe; the real specie, which is
about sixteen millions sterling, serves only as change in large sums,
which are always made in paper, or for payment in small ones. Thus
circumstanced, the nation is put to its wit's end, and obliged to be
severe almost to criminality, to prevent the practice and growth of
forgery. Scarcely a session passes at the Old Bailey, or an execution
at Tyburn, but witnesses this truth, yet you, sir, regardless of the
policy which her necessity obliges her to adopt, have made your whole
army intimate with the crime. And as all armies at the conclusion of
a war, are too apt to carry into practice the vices of the campaign,
it will probably happen, that England will hereafter abound in
forgeries, to which art the practitioners were first initiated under