imitate. But none were adopted, for the
obvious reason that ever so indifferent and
easily executed imitation of an elaborate note
is quite sufficient to deceive an uneducated
eye; as had been abundantly proved in the
instance of the Irish "black note." The Bank
had not been indifferent or idle on the subject,
for it had spent some hundred thousand
pounds in projects for inimitable notes. At
last––not long before the Commission was
appointed––they were on the eve of adopting
an ingenious and costly mechanism for
printing a note so precisely alike on both
sides as to appear as one impression, when
one of the Bank printers imitated it exactly
by the simple contrivance of two plates and a
hinge. This may serve as a sample of the
other one hundred and seventy-nine projects.

Neither the gallows, nor expensive and
elaborate works of art, having been found
effectual in preventing forgery, the true
expedient for at least lessening the crime was
adopted in 1821:––the issue of small notes
was wholly discontinued, and sovereigns were
brought into circulation. The forger's trade
was nearly annihilated. Criminal returns
inform us that during the nine years after the
resumption of gold currency the number of
convictions for offences having reference to
the Bank of England notes were less than
one hundred, and the executions only eight.
This clinches the argument against the
efficacy of the gallows. In 1830 death
punishments were repealed for all minor
offences, and, although the cases of Bank
Note Forgeries slightly increased for a time,
yet there is no reason to suppose that they
are greater now than they were between
1821 and 1830.

At present, Bank paper forgeries are not
numerous. One of the latest was that of the
twenty pound note, of which about sixty
specimens tound their way into the Bank. It
was well executed in Belgium by foreigners,
and the impressions were passed among the
Change-agents in various towns in France
and the Netherlands. The speculation did
not succeed; for the notes got into, and were
detected at, the Bank, a little too soon to
profit the schemers much.

The most considerable frauds now
perpetrated are not forgeries; but are done upon
the plan of the highwayman mentioned in.
our first chapter. In order to give currency
to stolen or lost notes which have been
stopped at the Bank (lists of which are
supplied to every banker in the country), the
numbers and dates are fraudulently altered.
Some years since, a gentleman, who had been
receiving a large sum of money at the Bank,
was robbed of it in an omnibus. The notes
gradually came in, but all were altered.
The last was one for five hundred pounds,
dated the 12th March, 1846, and numbered
32109. On the Monday (3rd June) after the
last "Derby Day," amid the twenty-five thousand
pieces of paper that were examined by
the Bank Inspectors, there was one note
for five hundred pounds, dated 12th March,
1848, and numbered 32409. At that note an
inspector suddenly arrested his rapid
examination of the pile of which it was one. He
scrutinised it for a minute, and pronounced it
"altered." On the next day, that same note,
with a perfect one for five hundred pounds,
is shown to us with an intimation of the fact.
We look at every letter; we trace every line;
follow every flourish: we hold both up to the
light; we undulate our visuals with the waves
of the water-mark. We confess that we
cannot pronounce decisively; but we have an
opinion derived from a slight "goutiness " in
the fine stroke of the figure 4 that No. 32409
is the forgery! so indeed it was. Yet the
Bank Inspector had picked it out from the
hundred genuine notes as instantaneously––
pounced upon it as rapidly, as if it had been
printed with green ink upon card-board.

This then, O gentlemen forgers and sporting
note alterers, is the kind of odds which is
against you. A minute investigation of the
note assured us of your exceeding skill and
ingenuity; but it also convinced us of the
superiority of the detective ordeal which you
have to blind and to pass. In this instance
you had followed the highwayman's plan,
and had put with great cunning, the
additional marks to the 1 in 32109 to make it
into a 4. To hide tlte scraping out of the
top or serif of the figure 1 to make the
angle from which to draw the fine line of the
4 you had artfully inserted with a pen the
figures "£16 16" as if that sum had been
received from a person bearing a name that
you had written above. You had with
extraordinary neatness cut out the "6" from
1846, and filled up the hole with an 8
abstracted from some note of lesser value. You
had fitted it with remarkable precision; only
you had not got the 8 quite upright enough to
pass the shrewd glance of the Bank Inspector.

We have seen a one-pound note made up
of refuse pieces of a hundred other Bank
notes, and pasted on a piece of paper (like a
note that had been accidentally torn), so as
to present an entire and passable whole.

To alter with a pen a 1 into a 4 is an easy
task to cut out the numeral from the date in
one note and insert it into another, needs only
a tyro in paper-cutting; but to change the
special number by which each note is
distinguished, is a feat only second in
impossibility to trumping every court-card of every
suit six times running in a rubber of whist.
Yet we have seen a note so cleverly altered
by this expedient, that it was actually paid
by the Bank cashiers. If the reader will take
a Bank note out of his purse, and examine
its "number," he will at once appreciate the
combination of chances required to find, on
any other note, any other figure that shall
displace any one of the numerals so as to avoid
detection. The "number" of every Bank note
is printed twice on one line first, on the words