Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/189

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BANK NOTES, BAD OR STOLEN.
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certain; and two or three officers find it worth their while to spend a whole day in thus pursuing them from shop to shop, until they are discovered,—one or the other always keeping them in view, when another is making his hasty enquiries, as above mentioned.

Under this head we must class the passers of bad notes, or forgeries of the Bank of England cash notes; nor do we see why the ruses which rogues have recourse to, the better to get rid of stolen notes (or those which are otherwise improperly come by) should not be considced of the same genus: all three involve their utterers in the same penalty—death; and all require the same management to avoid detection, or even pursuit. For instance, a man received a ten pound note too much for a cheque on a bank (Masterman's)—he affects that he has not received more than the right sum, for aught he knew; or, if he has, that he paid it away again just as he received it. Upon coming to trial, however, it turns out that he goes to a shop in Red Lion Street, Holborn, from which it is sent to the public-house to be changed; and up to this latter place it is traced from the Bank of England. Proving, in this manner, the fellow as dishonest as if he had come at the property by means of burglary or of highway rob-