people were made bites and cheats to one another in all their business;
and if you went but to buy a pair of gloves, or stockings, or any
trifle, at a shop, you went with bad money in one hand, and good money
in the other, proffering first the bad coin, to get it off, if possible,
and then the good, to make up the deficiency, if the other was rejected.

Thus, people were daily upon the catch to cheat and surprise one
another, if they could; and, in short, paid no good money for anything,
if they could help it. And how did we triumph, if meeting with some poor
raw servant, or ignorant woman, behind a counter, we got off a
counterfeit half-crown, or a brass shilling, and brought away their
goods (which were worth the said half-crown or shilling, if it had been
good) for a half-crown that was perhaps not worth sixpence, or for a
shilling not worth a penny: as if this were not all one with picking the
shopkeeper's pocket, or robbing his house!

The excuse ordinarily given for this practice was this--namely, that it
came to us for good; we took it, and it only went as it came; we did not
make it, and the like; as if, because we had been basely cheated by A,
we were to be allowed to cheat B; or that because C had robbed our
house, that therefore we might go and rob D.

And yet this was constantly practised at that time over the whole
nation, and by some of the honestest tradesmen among us, if not by all
of them.

When the old money was, as I have said, called in, this cheating trade
was put to an end, and the morals of the nation in some measure
restored--for, in short, before that, it was almost impossible for a
tradesman to be an honest man; but now we begin to fall into it again,