A portion of this currency frequently becomes depreciated or worthless,
and all of it is easily counterfeited in such a manner as to require
peculiar skill and much experience to distinguish the counterfeit from
the genuine note. These frauds are most generally perpetrated in the
smaller notes, which are used in the daily transactions of ordinary
business, and the losses occasioned by them are commonly thrown upon the
laboring classes of society, whose situation and pursuits put it out of
their power to guard themselves from these impositions, and whose daily
wages are necessary for their subsistence. It is the duty of every
government so to regulate its currency as to protect this numerous
class, as far as practicable, from the impositions of avarice and
fraud. It is more especially the duty of the United States, where the
Government is emphatically the Government of the people, and where this
respectable portion of our citizens are so proudly distinguished from
the laboring classes of all other nations by their independent spirit,
their love of liberty, their intelligence, and their high tone of moral
character.
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