The lower ranks among the Irish, and the German Jews, are the chief supporters of the trade of circulating base money in London;--there is said to be scarce an Irish labourer who does not exchange his week's wages for base money; taking a mixture of shillings, sixpences, and copper.
The Jews principally confine themselves to the coinage and circulation of copper; while the Irish women are the chief utterers and colourers of base silver. A vast number of these low females have acquired the mischievous art of colouring the bad shillings and sixpences, which they purchase from the employers of Jew-boys, who cry _bad shillings_.
It is somewhat singular that among the Jews, although many cases occur where they appear to be coiners of copper money and dealers to a great extent, yet scarce an instance can be adduced of their having any concern in the coinage of base silver: neither are they extensive dealers in any other base money than copper.
The Jews, however, deal largely in foreign coin, counterfeited in this country; having been the chief means by which _Louis d'Ors_, _Half Johannas_, as well as various silver coins, (particularly _Dollars_) made of base metal, have been sent out of this country. It is through the same channel that the Sequins of Turkey have been exported; and also the Pagodas of India.[49]
In contemplating and in developing the causes of the vast accumulation and increase of base money, which has thus deluged the country of late years, the evil will be found to have proceeded chiefly from the want of _a new coinage:--of laws, applicable to the new tricks and devices practised by the coiners:--of proper checks upon fraudulent Circulation:--of rewards for the detection and apprehension of Offenders;--and of a sufficient fund to ensure the prompt execution of the law; by a vigorous and energetic Police_, directed not only to the execution of apposite laws in the detection and punishment of offenders, but also to the means of prevention.
The vigour and energy requisite to put good and apposite laws in execution for the suppression of crimes of every kind, but particularly that of the coinage and circulation of base money, depend much on the zeal and activity of the Magistrate: and on the affording an adequate pecuniary resource, to enable him to reward men who may undertake to risk their persons in the company of desperate and daring offenders, in order to obtain that species of evidence which will produce a conviction. Without such pecuniary resource, the law, as well as the exertions of the Magistrate, becomes a dead letter: and his efforts for the purpose of promoting the ends of public justice, are crippled and lost to the Community.