institution of Slavery-the unjust disfranchisement of free Blacks -the trading in slaves carried on from State to State-and the dissolute and violent character of those adventurers, whose impatience for guilty wealth spreads the horrors of slavery over the new acquisitions in the South.* Let the Lawgivers of that Imperial Republic deeply consider how powerfully these disgraceful circumstances tend to weaken the love of Liberty; the only bond which can hold together such vast territories, and therefore the only source and guard of the tranquillity and greatness of America.

ART. IX. Returns of Prosecutions and Convictions for Forging Notes of the Bank of England, from 1783 to 1818; laid before the House of Commons, 21st April 1818.

IN

N former ages, the debasement of the coin, by authority of the Sovereign, was one of the favourite resources of needy governments; and the same destructive practice still prevails in the despotic countries of the East. The ignorance of profuse and rapacious barbarians, prevents them from seeing any part of this process beyond the first step. They are incapable of perceiving, that the money price of all other commodities immediately rises with the decrease in the value of their coin; that the same apparent revenue will no longer command the same quantity of produce; and that, both as a government, and as the largest dealers and consumers, they will ultimately suffer from that confusion, want of mutual confidence, and general uncertainty in all incomes, debts, and undertakings, which are the necessary consequences of sudden alterations in the value of money.

In more modern times, this expedient of bankrupt barbarism has been generally relinquished: But, since the common use of paper currency, means have been found of perverting, for the like mischievous purposes, that invention, which, when it is regulated by true principles, is one of the most useful, as well as beautiful contrivances of human ingenuity. A paper money, not exchangeable at the pleasure of the holder for gold or silver, is an expedient in which the same ends are pursued, and the same evils are incurred, as in the debasement of metallic money. When the over-issue which such an incon

* See Mr Fearon's Account of the Slave Trade on the Mississippi, and his frightful extracts from the newspapers of New Orleans.

vertible paper never fails to produce, necessarily diminishes its real value, at the same time that, directly or indirectly, individuals are obliged to receive it according to its former denomination; the effect is precisely the same with the tyrannical operations on coin, which are now cited as proofs of the ignorance and barbarism of the darkest ages. A bank note which will purchase only sixteen shillings worth of silver, but is forced upon all dealers at twenty, is in the same situation with a sovereign which we might be compelled to receive at twenty-five shillings, by proclamation or statute. The evils of such a paper, in the American and French revolutions; the mischiefs experienced from its more limited use in the absolute monarchies of the Continent at this moment; are too well known to require enumeration.

The stoppage of payment by the Bank of England, was a measure which originated in a fatal panic; but of which the continuance has undoubtedly arisen in experience of its convenience to Government, and profitableness to the Bank, No man in Europe, whose name could be quoted without absurdity, now doubts that the principles of the Bullion Committee in 1810 are true. If any man were now to propose to a public assembly a resolution, that Bank notes were held, in public estimation, to be equivalent to the legal coin of the realm;'* the only serious answer to such an assertion would be, to ask the meaning of his words.

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It must, however, be owned, that the evils of inconvertible paper money have been mitigated, in this country, by long experience of great monied transactions-by ancient habits of commercial confidence-by thorough knowledge of the importance of mutual support-by a sort of mechanical reliance on a Bank paper which had stood the test of a century, and which, in its new state, retained a great part of the credit which it had gained by being so long exchangeable at pleasure-by the watchful guard of public opinion-and by those wholesome discussions in Parliament, of which the usefulness is best established by the clamours which the Treasury and the Bank never failed to raise against them. All these aids and controls, though inadequate substitutes for convertibility, must be allowed to have limited the range of the evil. But it is not the less true, that for twentyone years the whole moneyed transactions of this empire have been at the discretion of a Banking Company; and that, as the amount of their profits depends on the magnitude of their issues, they have been tempted by the laws to make the most destructive exercise of their power. It is also evident, that as

we and our posterity must pay in gold and silver the interest of loans made in depreciated paper, we must long bear the burden of the most gigantic system of Usury ever practised by a spendthrift Government.

It is observable, that England, which has escaped, though narrowly, that national ruin which has usually followed compulsory paper, should, on the other hand, exhibit, in a greater degree than any other country, its fatal efficacy in tempting the indigent to the perpetration of crimes. To counterfeit Bank notes was, indeed, made a capital felony before any other species of forgery; but, till the stoppage of the Bank, it was an infrequent offence. Before we make any observations on the moral revolution which followed the stoppage, we entreat the attention of every reader who considers the prevention of crimes as any part of the object of Government, to the following authentic and extraordinary documents.

"No. 1.

"An Accounit of the Number of Persons prosecuted for Forging Notes of the Governor and Company of the Bank of England, and for uttering such Notes knowing them to be forged; during the 14 Years preceding the Suspension of Cash Payments by the Bank in February 1797, distinguishing the Years.

"An Account of the Number of Persons prosecuted for Forging Notes of the Governor and Company of the Bank of England, and for knowingly uttering or possessing such Forged Notes, kuowing them to be Forged, since the Suspension of Cash Pay

ments by the Bank, in February 1797, to the 25th of February 1818; distinguishing the Years, and the Numbers Convicted and Acquitted.

The tables which follow are framed from a return not laid before the House of Commons till after the discussions on the subject of forgery were concluded. This important return is An Abstract of Capital Convictions and Executions in London and Middlesex from 1749 to 1817 inclusive, with a statement of the offences. Before 1749 we have no regular information. We have no account of the same nature relating to the capital convictions and executions in the country till 1805, since which time an account of the criminal proceedings at the Assizes and Sessions has been, and now by law must be, annually laid before Parliament. In the Return from London and Middlesex,

the counterfeiting of bank-notes is not distinguished from other forgeries. But the above return, No. 1, from the Bank of England, shows the number of capital convictions from 1783 to 1797, on prosecutions for the forgery of their notes, to have been three.

No. 3. exhibits the whole number of executions, for every species of forgery, in the years between 1783 and 1797 in London and Middlesex; taken from "The Abstract."

Though we do not know the executions throughout England, for all forgeries, at that time; we know that there were only three for counterfeiting bank-notes: And we shall hardly underrate the proportion of Bank prosecutions to the whole, if we divide the 42 executions for forgery which we know to have then taken place in London and Middlesex, by the three executions for forging bank-notes, which are ascertained to have occurred in the same period in every part of England. Without increasing the dividend by the addition of any supposed number of executions for the country, the executions for forging bank-notes will be to those for the crime of forgery in general, as one to fourteen.

No. 4. contains an account of executions, for all forgeries, in the capital, from 1749 to 1782; taken from " the Abstract.

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