The Sun.
London, England, 1841-10-30 00:00:00

bills issued by Mr. SMITH were illegally signed,
that opinion would appear decisive of the ques-
tion that the Government should pay the bills.
In Mr. ASLETT'S case, however, there was no
question as to the bills having been issued by
the authority of Government. They were so is-
sued, and it was because they were so issued that
the Judges held them to be valid. The reverse
is at present the case. The bills issued by Mr.
SMITH were issued without, or in defiance of,
the authority of Government ; and so far as the
case of ASLETT is concerned, the opinion of the
Judges would appear to warrant the Government
in denying its responsibility.
But some other and more important considera-
tions occur to us. Exchequer bills bear a re-
semblance to bank-notes, and the credit of the
Government will be gone if it do not pay even
the forgeries upon it. We apprehend the indict-
ment would run as in the case of a forgery
of a bank-note, with intent to defraud the issuer
of the bill or note, and, if so, we do not see how
the individual or body authorising such an in-
dictment, can in reason object to pay the forged
document. It will be quite impossible, by any
kind of contrivance, to prevent Exchequer bills
from being forged; and therefore it is indispen-
sible, in order to keep those documents in circu-
lation, that the Government should recognise the
general principle of paying forged Exchequer
bills put into circulation without its authority.
In the present case, there are some peculiari-
ties which must be attended to. Mr. SMITH is
supposed to have had confederates, and it seems
certain that parties have taken the false Ex-
chequer bills, in deposit, and for loans, under
very suspicious circumstances. Of course it
would be manifestly unjust that either class of
these wrongdoers should be able to recover any
losses they may have sustained of the Govern-
ment. But wherever parties have, in an honest
straightforward manner, in the ordinary way of
business, become the possessors of these fraudu-
lent Exchequer bills, they should be paid as if
the bills were genuine. In this case, it appears
to us, that, subservient to the general principle of
the Government responsibility, the payment, or
non-payment, will mainly rest on the total ab-
sense, or not, of all suspicion as to the mode and
manner of acquiring possession.
When the officers of the Exchequer are in
doubt as to their own signatures, when the
fraudulent bills were printed on the Government
paper with the Government types, and were
such complete fac-similes of the genuine bills
that the only means of detecting the fraud was
that two bills bore the same number, or by com-
paring the bills with the counterfoils in the Ex-
chequer from which they were cut, neither of which
tests could any individual apply, for it is stated
that the forged bills always corresponded in
❑umber with bills which were known to be
lodged in the vaults of the Bank and never came
into circulation; when these bills were issued
by a servant of the Government, like the
clerk of a banker paying notes he had forged of
his employer's over that employer's counter, and
that servant was the person who would vouch, if
any question arose, as to their genuineness—when
all these circumstances are taken into considera-
tion, it seems to us that any person receiving
those fraudulent bills in the ordinary way of bu-
siness, cannot, in reason, lie expected to incur a
shilling loss by their being forgeries. On the
whole, we are of opinion that Government ought
to acknowledge its responsibility, accompanying
that with an avowed determination to sift to the
utmost the means by which the parties possess-
ing the bills came into possession, and only dis-
puting the payment when those means are open
to suspicion.
We must now make one remark on the Bank
of England. Much is said about the loose man-
ner in which the business of the Exchequer Bill-
office is conducted, which certainly is as bad as
possible, and it has been suggested that this
business should be transferred to the Bank.
But is this corporation free from blame ? It is
said that 60,0001. of the fraudulent Exchequer
bills have been received by the Bank in pay-
ment of the loan. It is also said that these
fraudulent hills were doubles of bills in the
possession of the Bank. Surely such a body
should have, as in fact it has, a list of all the
bills in its possession ; and surely there can be
no excuse, with such a list in its possession, for
the carelessness of its officers in taking bills
which a comparison of the numbers of their own
bills must have shown were liable to suspicion.
According to the statement no other body or in-
dividual but the Bank had the means of as-
certaining the forgery, for the genuine
doubles of the counterfeit bills were said to be in
its possession. If it be true that it accepted 60,0001.
worth of forged bills as a subscription to Mr.
GOULBURN'S loan, the Bank of England, on the
principle of not having used due diligence in the
exercise of its business ought to suffer the loss.
At any rate, we see in that sufficient evidence of
carelessness to make us decide that the Bank of
England ought not to have the business of issu-
ing Exchequer bills transferred to it.
Report says that Mr. SMITH has carried on his
fraudulent transactions for some years, and he
must have had great confidence in the careless-
ness of the Bank, which, on coming into posses-
sion at any time of one of his bills could have de-
tected a fraud, to have kept so long at his work.
If the practice have been continued for years,
very strong evidence will be required to prove
that the Bank has not been excessively careless
in its mode of managing business.
The discovery of Mr. SMITH'S fraud comes very
opportunely, we think, in relation to a question
which is now of great public interest. If we
have a national bank, what can possibly screen
us against forgery to as great, or a greater, ex-
tent than has been practised by Mr. Smut? In-
genuity, sharpened by cupidity—by an inces-
sant desire—will always overmaster ingenuity
only encouraged by the cold dictates of duty,
with a regularly paid salary. Forgery, there-
fore, would be practised, and might be prac-
tised, as in the case of Mr. SMITH, on a most
exorbitant scale. The consequences of such a
forgery of national bank paper in general circu-
lation, may be imagined by the vast confusion
which the discovery of Mr.' SMITH'S fraud has
caused amongst all the holders of Exchequer
bills, who, in fact, are all the banks and all the
moneyed classes in the kingdom. A forgery of
private bank paper could neither be so exten-
sive nor so easy as a forgery of national bank
paper, and certainly not so disastrous. The dis-
covery of Mr. SMITH'S fraud, therefore, has
come opportunely to make the possibility of
forging national bank notes to a great extent a
most important consideration in the proposed
plan of having one national establishment to
issue all the promises to pay on demand which
are put into circulation throughout the whole
empire.

We see by an advertisement in another part of
The Sun that the forty-seventh anniversary of
the acquittal of HARDY, TOOKE, and THELWALL,
will be celebrated by a public dinner on the sth
instant. That is an occasion which should be
seized by all those who prize the liberty of the
subject, to testify their devotion to the good
cause, which was assailed in the person of those
patriots. We live, we acknowledge with great
pleasure, in happier times, and are no longer sub-
ject to those virulent prosecutions by which
Toryism in its more truculent days sought, and
sought in vain, to subdue the spirit of liberty.
It is now far less fierce, and far more cunning.
It seeks to attain the same object by bland devi-
ces. It fetters our hands and our feet, and
" flogs us in the belly," for our own benefit. As
it cannot openly play the tyrant, it enacts the
part of a parent, and curbs and chastises the infant
people, or drills them into obedience, out of pure
love and kindness. It is all calmness and "mature
consideration." It rebukes our childish impa-
tience for more liberty and more food, and tells
us with parental authority that we shall thrive all
tire better by-and-bye, for now being restrained
and starved. It has no other object, it assures
us in the sweetest tones, than to protect the na-