Governor and Company of the Bank of England.

There were five indictments against the prisoner, to all of which
he pleaded not guilty, when he was arraigned before Mr. Serjeant
Arabin in the course of the morning. On being brought before the
judges, however, he begged to be allowed to withdraw the former
plea, and then pleaded guilty to two of the indictments which were
not of a capital nature.

The counsel for the Bank having explained that there were three
other indictments, but that the Bank did not desire to shed blood,
the plea of guilty on the two minor charges was recorded, and the
prisoner at the close of the session sentenced by the Recorder to
transportation for life.


He was taken back to Newgate, preparatory to his removal to the
colonies. In a fanciful passage in one of his early essays he had
fancied himself 'lying in Horsemonger Gaol under sentence of death'
for having been unable to resist the temptation of stealing some
Marc Antonios from the British Museum in order to complete his
collection. The sentence now passed on him was to a man of his
culture a form of death. He complained bitterly of it to his
friends, and pointed out, with a good deal of reason, some people
may fancy, that the money was practically his own, having come to
him from his mother, and that the forgery, such as it was, had been
committed thirteen years before, which, to use his own phrase, was
at least a circonstance attenuante. The permanence of personality
is a very subtle metaphysical problem, and certainly the English
law solves the question in an extremely rough-and-ready manner.