Page:The Trial, at Large, of William Booth and his Associates.pdf/24

 evening (the following Thursday) and were during that time going about the farming business, he saw them again on Friday, and they were then in custody.

The note No. 21099, the subject of the indictment, being now read by the Clerk of the Arraigns,

Mr. said, "That, my Lord, is our case."

Mr. now called upon the counsel for the prosecution to make their election on which count they meant to call for conviction.

Mr. declined so doing.

Mr. said, "See what has been done, by putting in a count for disposing of the notes, evidence of other notes has been let in, which could not have been done in a prosecution for forgery."

The said, evidence of the contents of the trunk might be given, they having been sent away from the house.

Mr. admitted the contents of the trunk might be produced, but they had gone farther, they had gone on to shew, that all those notes were forged; evidence certainly on a prosecution for uttering a note knowing it to be forged, the proof of other forged notes being in his possession, was admissible evidence, because it tended to shew the knowledge of its being forged; but in a prosecution for forgery, though he admitted all found upon him might be given in evidence, yet evidence of their being forged, could not in such a prosecution be admitted to prove that the note in question was forged. Mr. Alley referred to his own notes of the case of Thos. Flannaghan, at the last April sessions at the Old Bailey, before Lord Ellenborough, in which another note was produced, and though his Lordship admitted to give it in evidence, yet he would not admit that it should be proved to be forged, or that the prisoner had admitted it to be so. Mr. Alley never in all his practice knew that to be admitted in evidence, which had been this day in a prosecution; if the prosecutors would say they would call for conviction only on the count for disposing of the note, he would be satisfied; but if that evidence was admitted in a prosecution for forgery, it was a rule adopted in favour of the Governor and Company of the Bank of England, which would not be admitted between A. and B.

The said, the learned counsel was mistaken, he D