up, extended his inquiries to his intelligence offices, and had collected all the information possible concerning him; when, to Matthieson's utter confusion, the advertisement of the Darlington Bank was produced, and he was found to answer the description of that Matthieson who was suspected to have forged the notes that had been counterfeited of that bank. This being read to him, and being asked if his name was not Matthieson, instead of Maxwell, he all at once lost his resolution, turned pale, burst into tears, and, after saying he found he was a dead man, he added, "And now I will confess all." He accordingly owned that he fabricated the notes in the manner already related; that the moment he had completed the number of notes he thought proper, he destroyed the plates and every implement which he had made use of in the fabrication; that his next business was to negotiate those notes, and then return and make out more; that he had an astonishing facility in doing all this, so that he could accomplish the whole in less than a single day.

Matthieson was tried at the Old Bailey, on the 20th May, 1779. The particular forgery on which he was charged was for uttering at Coventry, a twenty-pound Bank of England note. The note was produced in court,

and witnesses were brought to prove its having been negotiated by him. That fact being established, the next circumstance in consideration was, to prove that the note was absolutely a counterfeit one. This his prosecutors were totally unable to do by any testimony they could adduce, so minutely and so dexterously had he feigned all the different marks. The note itself was not only so made as to make it altogether impossible for any human optic to perceive a difference, but the very hands of the cashier and the entering clerk were also so counterfeited, as entirely to preclude a positive discrimination, even by these men themselves. The water-mark, too— the words "Bank of England"-which the bankers have considered as an infallible criterion of fair notes, a mark which could not be resembled by any possible means, was also so hit off by this man as to make it not in the power of the most exact observer to perceive a difference. Several papermakers were of opinion that this mark must have been put on in the making of the paper, but Matthieson declared that he put it on afterwards by a method peculiar to himself, and known only to himself. The extreme similitude of the fair and false notes had such an effect upon the judge and jury, that the prisoner would certainly have been discharged for want of evidence to prove the

counterfeit, if his own information, taken at Sir John Fielding's, had not been produced, which immediately turned the scale against him, and he was found guilty.

Pursuant to the code and custom of that period, which punished forgery and even lesser crimes as murder, Matthieson was hanged at Tyburn on the 28th July, 1779. He had offered, if his life were spared, to explain how he imitated the watermark, but this proposal was declined. The secret died with him. Matthieson is not the only instance in those days of able engravers devoting their talents to forgery. Eminent artists-Mr. Ryland, for example-have been known to use their burin in the counterfeiting of notes, heedless of the death that awaited and proved the result of their detection. Yet, now that the punishment of forgery is more compatible with Christianity and common humanity, the crime has gone down to the common class of malefactors. Its committal by a ruined tradesman, or scheming outcast, may prove an exception occasionally to this; but there is no modern instance of any one distinguished in the fine arts degrading his powers and his profession by the practice of forgery.

CAUSES AND JUDGMENTS IN EUROPEAN COURTS ESTABLISHING THE ILLEGALITY OF SLAVERY.

"La France, mère de liberté, ne permet aucuns esclaves. Dès qu'un esclave est entré en France il devient libre."-CAUSES CELEBRES, edition of 1747, vol. 13, pp. 504, 549.

"He aimed to secure his native country from the guilt and inconsistency of employing the arm of freedom to rivet the fetters of bondage, and established for the negro race, in the person of Somerset, the long disputed rights of human nature."-Part of the Inscription on GRANVILLE SHARP'S Monument in Westminster Abbey.

"I speak in the spirit of the British law, which makes liberty commensurate with and inseparable from British soil-which proclaims even to the stranger and the sojourner, the moment he sets

his foot upon British earth, that the ground on which he treads is holy, and consecrated by the genius of universal emancipation. No matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced; no matter what complexion incompatible with freedom, an Indian or an African sun may have burnt upon him; no matter in what disastrous battle his liberty may have been cloven down; no matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar of slavery :the first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in her own majesty; his body swells beyond the measure of his chains, that burst from around him; and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled by the irresistible genius of universal emancipation."-JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN-Defence of Hamilton Rowan.

THE fine principle, so much boasted of in England, that slavery is abhorrent to the natural or common law of a civilized country, was, strange to say, an acknowledged and established maxim in the jurisprudence of many continental countries, long before it came to be positively asserted and laid down by our courts of justice. In Holland, slaves, says John Voet and other