ess of heart made up between the venomous malignity of a
serpent and the spiteful imbecility of an inferior reptile.

The laws of any civilized country would condemn you to the gibbet
without regard to your rank or titles, because it is an action foreign
to the usage and custom of war; and should you fall into our hands,
which pray God you may, it will be a doubtful matter whether we are to
consider you as a military prisoner or a prisoner for felony.

Besides, it is exceedingly unwise and impolitic in you, or any other
persons in the English service, to promote or even encourage, or wink
at the crime of forgery, in any case whatever. Because, as the riches of
England, as a nation, are chiefly in paper, and the far greater 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 conclusio