In the course of his speech, Mr. Goschen made some
remarkable statements about forgery. It appears that the "average annual number of forged notes presented to the Banks in the ten years from 1812 to 1821 was 750 of five-pound notes, while from 1865 to 1874 the number was only 18." The forgeries of notes have, in fact, been reduced to one- forty-second part of their old number. The one-pound notes, it is true, will go to a less intelligent class, but that makes no difference. Not one in fifty of the educated can tell a forged note, and the real check is the habit of keeping money in the Banks, so that notes pass incessantly under the eyes of experts. The employer takes his money from a bank, and the trades- man pays his money into a bank on Saturday afternoon. Mr. Goschen might have added that a doubtful note can be ear-marked, and a doubtful coin cannot.
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