it away for good, knowing it to be counterfeit; so that it is a piece of
good service to the public to take away the occasion and instrument of
so much knavery and deceit.

Secondly, he prevents a worse fraud, which is, the buying and selling
such counterfeit money. This was a very wicked, but open trade, in
former days, and may in time come to be so again: fellows went about the
streets, crying '_Brass money, broken or whole;'_ that is to say, they
would give good money for bad. It was at first pretended that they were
obliged to cut it in pieces, and if you insisted upon it, they 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