A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis: Containing a Detail of the Various Crimes and Misdemeanors by which Public and Private Property and Security are, at Present, Injured and Endangered: and Suggesting Remedies for their PreventionColquhoun, Patrick
History
A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis: Containing a Detail of the Various Crimes and Misdemeanors by which Public and Private Property and Security are, at Present, Injured and Endangered: and Suggesting Remedies for their Prevention
Colquhoun, Patrick
Crime -- England -- London; Police -- England -- London
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]
[Footnote 49: See ante, p. 17, 18.]
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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