JB_003_352v.xml

Title: [nd [wm 1798] 22 Mr. Bentham’s Plan]

Description: nd [wm 1798] 22

Mr. Bentham’s Plan for preventing Forgery of Paper Money.

be lost to this purpose in regard to the bulk of readers, who receive Bank

Notes, or Notes purporting to be such, as they come, but who, for want of

adequate inducement, never set themselves down to form to themselves any

comparative view of the appearance as between one class of Notes and another:

much less think of extending and comparison to all the

classes.(b) [marginal note:] 7. Plans of description adequate to such

indication are too obvious to need mentioning.

As to the particular plans or modes, capable of being adopted and adopted with

success for the exhibition of differences thus expressible, they are too

numerous and too various to be worth enumerating in the present stage of the

proposal. The difficulty would be – not in finding one such mode capable of

answering the purpose, but in making a choice amongst a multitude all presenting

themselves as alike capable. [marginal note:] 8. Safeguards confined to

the Particular spots in the Note are superseded by the above.

The Principle now before us cuts up the evil by the roots: instead of applying

itself to the rendering alteration difficult or impracticable, it renders it

unavailing, in whatever degree of perfection it may have been practised. Of the

other expedients above alluded to, thus much may accordingly be said in the

lump; viz: that whatever scope they may Note. (b) This I know, that in my

own instance, though having at this moment occasion thus particularly to apply

my mind to the subject, neither has it happened to me to attempt to institute

any such survey, nor, without a great deal more trouble than there would be any

use in my bestowing, would it now be in my power to attempt it. How wide soever

the difference in point of general appearance may be, between a One pound Note

& a Ten Pound Note, for example, yet were a pretended Ten pound Note, made

by alteration out of a One-Pound to be tendered to me, it would not find me

prepared for the detection of the imposture.

JB_003_352.xml

Title: [[Copyist’s hand: part of a booklet, comprising]

Description: [Copyist’s hand: part of a booklet, comprising folios 341 to 357]

nd [wm 1798]

21

§.4. Of Forgery in the way of Alteration. –

[marginal heading:] 4.

Classes of Notes exposed to falsification, setting aside the above safeguards.

According to this view of the matter, a One pound Note (supposing the appearance

as between class and class to be in other respects the same) will be capable of

being altered into a Two pound Note, or into a Ten pound Note, but not into any

other. A Five pound Note will not be capable of being altered any other. A Forty

pound Note will be capable of being altered into a Fifty Pound Note, or into a

Sixty pound Note: A Twenty pound Note, into a Thirty pound Note: and so on. What

may be the number of such different classes at present in circulation, and what

the respective sums, I do not pretend to know: nor would it be as much as worth

enquiring; since fresh classes (that is notes for sums not at present extant)

may come to be issued at any time.

[marginal heading:] 5.

In the existing plan the security derived from diversity of appearance is

supposed to be employ’d

Forgery in the way of alteration having been practised (if I may speak from a

loose recollection derived from Newspapers) and that with a degree of temporary

success, in more instances than one, the idea of making a difference in point of

general appearance in this view, has already (I am inclined to think) not only

suggested itself, but been carried into practise: in some instances at least:

whether throughout is more than I am informed of

[marginal heading:] 6

- but not those which depend on indication of the diversity.

What I am apprehensive of is – that if, in this view or any other any such

differences have been studiously made, they are not of such a nature as to be

(according to the second of the rules above given) expressible in words. What is

certain is – that, whatever may be the differences, no such notification of

them, as is proposed in the third rule, is to be found in any instance. But, so

long as no such notification is given, the differences, expressible is not

expressible in words, will

be

JB_003_353.xml

Title: [[Copyist’s hand: part of a booklet, comprising]

Description: [Copyist’s hand: part of a booklet, comprising folios 341 to 357] nd [wm 1798]

23

§.4. Of Forgery in the way of Alteration. – may afford, for the application of

mechanical contrivance or chemical science, they occupy but a subordinate

station in the scale of practical importance.(c) Note. (c) It was with these

however that I set out a great many years ago: and of these a considerable

variety had presented itself to me, each of them promising to be of itself

adequate to the intended purpose. I will subjoin an extremely summary but

comprehensive view of them, rather for curiosity than use. [marginal heading:]

8(c) Safeguards thus superseded. 1. Mechanical – 2. Chemical - I Expedients of a

Mechanical nature. 1. Employing a stamp in one or more places, for framing the

letters expressive of the sum. Colour might be used with the stamp, not so much

by way of security against obliteration (it being but a precarious one) as to

render the letters more conspicuous in common use. The protuberance produced by

the stamp could not (it is supposed) be reduced for the purpose of

falsification: at least if such a degree of depth were given to it as might be

given to it. Among the particles forced in, some of them being borrowed as it

were from parts of the paper more and more distant, according to the depth of

the impression, could not afterwards (it is supposed) be restored. For rendering

the absence or presence of protuberances the more discernable, it might perhaps

be better that, in one place at least, no colour should be employed. 2. To

increase the difficulty, of obliterating the genuine letters, and inserting

spurious ones without laseration, a stamp producing perforations might be

employed for tracing out all or some of the letters, with or without a stamp of

the ordinary or simply-impressive kind. Whether the texture of the Paper

employed will bear in a degree sufficient for use such solutions of continuity

(to borrow a word from surgery) is in a way to be proved by experience:

punctures (with what precise view I do not exactly apprehend) having of late

been discernibly disposed in two