Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/109

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Charles Pelham Villiers.
101

nature of this kind of evidence. The first is related by Lord Eldon. A deed was produced at a trial, purporting to be attested by two witnesses, one of whom was Lord Eldon.[1] The genuineness of the document was strongly attacked; but the solicitor for the party setting it up, who was a most respectable man, had every confidence in the attesting witnesses, and had in particular compared the signature of Lord Eldon to the document with that of several pleadings signed by him. Lord Eldon had never attested a deed in his life.

This case it will be observed is precisely similar to the case of the reviewer stated above, comparing the signature attached, to what I maintain are the forged documents called the Logan Letters, with three undoubted signatures of Logan. The other remarkable case occurred in Scotland, where on a trial for forgery of some bank-notes, one of the banker's clerks, whose name was on a forged note, swore distinctly that it was his signature, while to another which was really his, he spoke with hesitation. "Standing alone," says Mr. Best, "any of the modes of proof of hand-


  1. In the case of Engleton v. Kingston, 8 Ves. jun. 476.