MATTHIESON THE FORGER.

JOHN MATTHIESON was born in Scotland, at Gretna Green. His father was a millwright, and accounted an ingenious mechanic; nor was the son's mechanical genius less conspicuous than that of his father. From the knowledge he had in millwork, he attained the art of making clocks; and by that, and cleaning and repairing watches, he was enabled, after the death of his father, to support his mother, his sister, and himself. But his mind was restless, and ever thirsting after improvement. Not content with what he had learned, which produced him only a bare competency, he became acquainted with an engraver, a loose, dissipated young man, whose extravagance often reduced him to great straits. With this youth he cultivated a dangerous friendship;

and, from a constant attendance, and close attention to him when at work, he stole from him that art which, though it might have enriched him by an honest application, proved his ruin, by converting it to an iniquitous purpose.

It was supposed that the youth was an accomplice of Matthieson at his first setting out, and that both were connected in forging the notes of the Darlington Bank; but nothing of that kind was proved.

To the art of engraving, Matthieson had added a particular facility in tracing, insomuch that he could take off the handwriting of any man with such exactness as even to deceive the writer himself.

Tempted by these acquirements, so flattering to his notions of suddenly becoming rich, his first experiment was made on the £5 notes of the Darlington Bank; but of these, being of small value and quick circulation, though currently negotiated, he could make no very considerable advantage; and being but a young beginner, and not over-cautious in passing his notes, a discovery was soon made by the Bank that their notes were forged, and Matthieson was suspected of being the forger. He was even described, and a reward offered for his apprehension, which, however, he found means to elude, by travelling into Scotland, where, forging the notes of the Royal Bank of

Edinburgh, he traversed that country and negotiated them; till, directing his route by the western road of Glasgow, where he was unknown, he found means to arrive at London undiscovered. Here he procured creditable apartments, where he lived for some time retired and unsuspected.

In all his peregrinations he seems to have paid great attention to his sister; to whom, however, it does not appear that he ever imparted the secret of his frauds.

His lodgings were over against Arundel Street, in the Strand, in a creditable family, to whom he passed for a watchmaker, come to London for improvement. In these lodgings he behaved with great regularity and sobriety, often retired by himself in the day, and often talked with the people in the shop as he passed and repassed, and seemed in every respect an unexceptionable character. His sister, indeed, appeared but mean, the landlord said, for a person that took an apartment at fifteen shillings a week.

Although Matthieson's mind, as he afterwards confessed, was much distressed by the consciousness of his guilt, yet that did not wholly destroy the activity of it for invention. It is astonishing to contemplate the powers of an inventive mind, when directed either to good or

evil purposes. Harrison, who by a long series of deliberate study, effected at last a timepiece of infinite use to navigation, and for which he received the applause and reward of his country, was forty years in effecting that which this Matthieson would probably have brought to perfection in less than as many months, had his inventive powers been directed to so laudable a purpose; for so rapid was he in his progress, that, though he entered upon his lodgings on the last day of February, he, before the 12th of the ensuing March, had purchased the copper, ground it, engraved it, fabricated the notes, printed them, forged the water-mark, and negotiated several of them: one, passed at Coventry, formed the subject for which he suffered: and so nicely was all this performed that the banker to whom this last-mentioned note was offered for change, made not the least scruple to receive it, though he knew it was presented by a perfect stranger. Matthieson had given the note to a silversmith at Coventry, of whom he had purchased a pair of buckles; who carried it to a banker's next door, and got cash for it.

It was therefore of the utmost consequence to national credit that so dangerous a person as Matthieson, however ingenious, should be detected. It was not enough for him to be master

of counterfeiting all the external lines of the face of the note with a nicety which might deceive even the very clerks who issued the notes, but he had acquired the very art of counterfeiting the internal mark of the paper on which the notes of the Bank of England were drawn, and of which paper the directors were so choice as not to suffer a sheet to be made, nor a note to be printed upon it, without the attendance of a trusty person or persons, to inspect upon oath the whole process. In this was thought their security, and it had exposed every former fraud of the like kind to immediate detection; but Matthieson's art was beyond their reach he held the whole circulation of the Bank in his hands; for, had he been suffered to flourish long, no man could have been safe in taking a bank-note who had not the books of the Bank to resort to. Even Mr. Geathing, one of the cashiers, being asked, if he had seen the name subscribed to the note on which the prisoner was convicted, on a separate piece of paper, without any suspicion of forgery, whether he could have sworn it was not his handwriting, his answer was, "I do not know that I could."

Matthieson's plan was to procure a note at the Bank of England, counterfeit it, pass the copy, and after some time return the original, getting, of course, back the money he gave for it. He