The politicians of that age, however, generally overlooked these very obvious considerations.  They marvelled exceedingly that every body should be so perverse as to use light money in preference to good money.  In other words, they marvelled that nobody chose to pay twelve ounces of silver when ten would serve the turn.  The horse in the Tower still paced his rounds.  Fresh waggon loads of choice money still came forth from the mill; and still they vanished as fast as they appeared.  Great masses were melted down; great masses exported; great masses hoarded; but scarcely one new piece was to be found in the till of a shop, or in the leathern bag which the farmer carried home from the cattle fair.  In the receipts and payments of the Exchequer the milled money did not exceed ten shillings in a hundred pounds.  A writer of that age mentions the case of a merchant who, in a sum of thirty-five pounds, received only a single halfcrown in milled silver.  Meanwhile the shears of the clippers were constantly at work.  The comers too multiplied and prospered; for the worse the current money became the more easily it was imitated.  During more than thirty years this evil had gone on increasing.  At first it had been disregarded; but it had at length become an insupportable curse to the country.  It was to no purpose that the rigorous laws against coining and clipping were rigorously executed.  At every session that was held at the Old Bailey terrible examples were made.  Hurdles, with four, five, six wretches convicted of counterfeiting or mutilating the money of the realm, were dragged month after month up Holborn Hill.  On one morning seven men were hanged and a woman burned for clipping; But all was vain.  The gains were such as to lawless spirits seemed more than proportioned to the risks.  Some clippers were said to have made great fortunes.  One in particular offered six thousand pounds for a pardon.  His bribe was indeed rejected; but the fame of his riches did much to counteract the effect which the spectacle of his death was designed to produce.632 Nay the severity of the punishment gave encouragement to the crime.  For the practice of clipping, pernicious as it was, did not excite in the common mind a detestation resembling that with which men regard murder, arson, robbery, nay, even theft.  The injury done by the whole body of clippers to the whole society was indeed immense; but each particular act of clipping was a trifle.  To pass a halfcrown, after paring a pennyworth of silver from it, seemed a minute, an almost imperceptible, fault.  Even while the nation was crying out most loudly under the distress which the state of the currency had produced, every individual who was capitally punished for contributing to bring the currency into that state had the general sympathy on his side.  Constables were unwilling to arrest the offenders.  Justices were unwilling to commit.  Witnesses were unwilling to tell the whole truth.  Juries were unwilling to pronounce the word Guilty.