nd [wm 1798]

D +

To the Bank

§ III. Application Principles

4 Verbal Description

Portraits

13*[?]

§.{3} /4/. Of Forgery in the way of Fabrication – Application of the Principles.

[Folio 003-317b was formerly pinned here]

{ 4. The fourth of the {difficulty above mentioned} circumstances above-mentioned

as capable of being made to enter into the composition of the instrument in

question (a Bank note) and therein of affording the means of throwing

obstruction in the way of an enterprize of forgery is the being capable of being

marked out to a degree of precision adequate to the purpose of prohibition and

punishment, by a purely verbal description, conceived in general terms without

the necessity of a reference to any individual object, to be referred to as the

object, the imitation of which is forbidden.

On this head it must farther be observed, that the act which the verbal

description is for the present purpose employd to characterize, must be such an

act as, with, or rather if possible even without, the warning given by the law

it will be morally impossible that a man should engage in the exercise of, with

any other intention than the very identical criminal intention marked out by the

law for prohibition and punishment. }

To apply this to the case of a Bank Note, framed and worded as at present –

The indication that would be afforded by a plate, fabricated in imitation of a

Bank Note of the present form, answers this purpose as far as it goes, as

effectually as can be wished. Nothing but the very words employd in a genuine

Note could afford the Forgerer any the smallest hope of succeeding in the

fabrication of a spurious one: and supposing a plate with these words upon it to

be found in the possession of any uncommissioned individual, no evidence could

be more perfectly conclusive of the existence of the criminal intention in

question on the part of the individual at least by whom the plate was made to

exhibit

those