The decision of the case against Mr. J. R. Herbert
for declining to let a picture which was signed with his name, but was a forgery, leave his possession without the name being struck out, exposes a monstrous defect in the law. If a man were to come into pos- session of a bill of exchange forged by some one in his own name, and were to let it go out to the world, he would clearly become an accomplice in a punishable fraud, for the bill would not really have the security which the name appended to it would seem to give it. But an artist who refuses to do just the same thing is, it now appears, liable for heavy damages for not permitting a picture which affects to be by him to be imposed on the world as his, though he knows it to be a fraud. In other words, law punishes an action which morality enjoins.
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