Complete. From the Adventurer.

Mobilitate viget.—Virgil.

Its life is motion.

Sir:—
THE ADULTERATION of the copper coin, as it is highly pernicious to trade in general, so it more immediately affects the itinerate branches of it. Among these, at present, are to be found the only circulators of base metal; and, perhaps, the only dealers who are obliged to take in payment such counterfeits as will find a currency nowhere else. And yet they are not allowed to raise the price of their commodities, though they are abridged of so considerable a portion of their profits.

  A Tyburn execution; a duel; a most terrible fire; or a horrid, barbarous, bloody, cruel, and inhuman murder, was wont to bring in vast revenues to the lower class of pamphleteers, who get their livelihood by vending these diurnal records publicly in the streets. But since half-pence have been valued at no more than five pence the pound weight, these occasional pieces will hardly answer the expenses of printing and paper; and the servant-maid, who used to indulge her taste for polite literature by purchasing fifty new playhouse songs, or a whole poetical sheet of the Yorkshire Garland or Gloucestershire Tragedy, for a half-penny, can now scarcely procure more than one single slip of “I Love Sue,” or “The Lover’s Complaint.”

  It is also observable that the park no longer echoes with the shrill cry of “Toothpicks! take you six, your honor, for a half-penny,” as it did when half-pence were half-pence worth. The vender contents herself with silently presenting her little portable shop, and guards against the rapacity of the buyer by exhibiting a very small parcel of her wares.

  But the greatest sufferers are undoubtedly the numerous fraternity of beggars; for, as things are circumstanced, it would be almost as profitable to work as to beg, were it not that many more are now induced to deal out their charity in what is of no other use to themselves, in the hope of receiving sevenfold in return. Indeed, since the usual donation has been so much lessened in its value, the beggars have been observed to be more vociferous and importunate. One of these orators, who takes his stand at Spring Gardens, now enforces his piteous complaint with: “Good Christians, one good half-penny to the stone-blind”; and another, who tells you he has lost the use of his precious limbs, addresses your compassion by showing a bad half-penny, and declaring that he is ready to perish with hunger, having tried it in vain at twenty-three places to buy a bit of bread. Farthings, we are told, were formerly called in by the beggars, as they threatened the ruin of their community. I should not wonder, therefore, if this public-spirited people were also to put a stop to the circulation of bad half-pence, by melting them down from time to time as they come into their hands. The experiment is worth making; and I am assured that, for some end or other, orders will be issued out from the king of the beggars, to bring all their adulterated copper to their mint in the borough, or their foundry in Moorfields.

  I was led to the consideration of this subject by some half-pence I had just received in change, among which one in particular attracted my regard, that seemed once to have borne the profile of King William, now scarcely visible, as it was very much battered and, besides other marks of ill usage, had a hole through the middle. As it happened to be the evening of a day of some fatigue, my reflections did not much interrupt my propensity to sleep, and I insensibly fell into a kind of half slumber; when, to my imagination, the half-penny, which then lay before me upon the table, erected itself upon its rim, and from the royal lips stamped on its surface articulately uttered the following narration:—

  “Sir! I shall not pretend to conceal from you the illegitimacy of my birth, or the baseness of my extraction; and though I seem to bear the venerable marks of old age, I received my being at Birmingham not six months ago. From thence I was transported, with many of my brethren of different dates, characters, and configurations, to a Jew peddler in Duke’s Place, who paid for us in specie scarce a fifth part of our nominal and extrinsic value. We were soon after separately disposed of, at a more moderate profit, to coffeehouses, chophouses, chandler shops, and ginshops.

  “I had not been long in the world before an ingenious transmuter of metals laid violent hands on me, and, observing my thin shape and flat surface, by the help of a little quicksilver exalted me into a shilling. Use, however, soon degraded me again to my native low station; and I unfortunately fell into the possession of an urchin just breeched, who received me as a Christmas box of his godmother.

  “A love of money is ridiculously instilled into children so early, that, before they can possibly comprehend the use of it, they consider it as of great value. I lost, therefore, the very essence of my being in the custody of this hopeful disciple of avarice and folly, and was kept only to be looked at and admired; but a bigger boy after a while snatched me from him, and released me from my confinement.

  “I now underwent various hardships among his playfellows, and was kicked about, hustled, tossed up, and chucked into holes, which very much battered and impaired me; but I suffered most by the pegging of tops, the marks of which I have borne about me to this day. I was in this state the unwitting cause of rapacity, strife, envy, rancor, malice, and revenge, among the little apes of mankind; and became the object and the nurse of those passions which disgrace human nature, while I appeared only to engage children in innocent pastimes. At length I was dismissed from their service by a throw with a barrow woman for an orange.

  “From her it is natural to conclude I posted to the ginshop; where, indeed, it is probable I should have immediately gone, if her husband, a foot soldier, had not wrested me from her at the expense of a bloody nose, black eye, scratched face, and torn regimentals. By him I was carried to the Mall, in St. James’s Park, where—I am ashamed to tell how I parted from him—let it suffice that I was soon after safely deposited in a night cellar.

  “From thence I got into the coat pocket of a blood, and remained there with several of my brethren for some days unnoticed. But one evening, as he was reeling home from the tavern, he jerked a whole handful of us through a sash window into the dining room of a tradesman, who he remembered had been so unmannerly to him the day before as to desire payment of his bill. We reposed in soft ease on a fine Turkey carpet till the next morning, when the maid swept us up; and some of us were allotted to purchase tea, some to buy snuff, and I myself was immediately trucked away at the door for the “Sweetheart’s Delight.”

  “It is not my design to enumerate every little accident that has befallen me, or to dwell upon trivial and indifferent circumstances, as is the practice of those important egotists who write narratives, memoirs, and travels. As useless to the community as my single self may appear to be, I have been the instrument of much good and evil in the intercourse of mankind. I have contributed no small sum to the revenues of the crown by my share in each newspaper, and in the consumption of tobacco, spirituous liquors, and other taxable commodities. If I have encouraged debauchery or supported extravagance, I have also rewarded the labors of industry and relieved the necessities of indigence. The poor acknowledge me as their constant friend; and the rich, though they affect to slight me and treat me with contempt, are often reduced by their follies to distresses which it is even in my power to relieve.

  “The present exact scrutiny into our constitution has, indeed, very much obstructed and embarrassed my travels; though I could not but rejoice in my condition last Tuesday, as I was debarred having any share in maiming, bruising, and destroying the innocent victims of vulgar barbarity. I was happy in being consigned to the mock encounters with feathers and stuffed leather; a childish sport, rightly calculated to initiate tender minds in arts of cruelty, and prepare them for the exercise of inhumanity on helpless animals!

  “I shall conclude, sir, with informing you by what means I came to you in the condition you see. A choice spirit, a member of the Kill Care Club, broke a linkboy’s pate with me last night, as a reward for lighting him across the kennel. The lad wasted half his tar flambeau in looking for me; but I escaped his search, being lodged snugly against a post. This morning a parish girl picked me up, and carried me with raptures to the next baker’s shop to purchase a roll. The master, who was church warden, examined me with great attention, and then, gruffly threatening her with Bridewell for putting off bad money, knocked a nail through my middle and fastened me to the counter; but the moment the poor hungry child was gone, he whipt me up again, and, sending me away with others in change to the next customer, gave me this opportunity of relating my adventures to you.”

  When I awoke, I found myself so much invigorated by my nap, that I immediately wrote down the strange story which I had just heard; and as it is not totally destitute of use and entertainment, I have sent it to you, that, by means of your paper, it may be communicated to the public. I am, sir,