The second charge concerns the presents which Count Struensee is said to have procured for himself and others, and more especially the forgery which is said to have been committed in the accounts of the special treasury for the months of April and May, 1771. As concerns the gratifications, it is sufficient for Struensee's defence that the king himself granted or approved of them, and Count Struensee is of opinion that, if compared with those given on former occasions, they will not be found extraordinary. As regards the falsification, he learns to his deep grief that even his Majesty himself appears to bear witness against him. But, as he solemnly asserts in his memorial that he was never guilty of such things, he also hopes that he will be permitted to quote the circumstances serving to prove his innocence. The Fiscal General employs two suppositions to prove this forgery, namely, that a cipher was added to each of the two amounts of 6,000 dollars, and that the gratification for Falckenskjold was inserted at a later date. But that this is not correct is proved by the document itself, in which the figures of all the four amounts and Falckenskjold's name are written with the same ink as the approbation, without mentioning that his Majesty (if we compare the document with the approval of other calculations written afterwards) must have signed higher up, if the line concerning Falckenskjold had not existed at the time when the royal signature was appended. It is true that the adding up seems to be written with a different ink, and the figure 3 in the 132,000 dollars to have been first a 2. But the former is of no consequence when it is remarked, that the adding up took place after the approval had been given, while the latter could easily occur through an error in casting up, as Panning has regarded it in his explanation, lit. I., p. 379. If we add to this--1. That Count Struensee had no necessity to have recourse to such a forgery, partly because his Majesty never refused him what he asked in such matters; partly, because a hundred other ways of enriching himself stood at his service, if he wished to act dishonestly, of which not the slightest evidence has been brought forward. 2. That he never made a secret of it, which might be supposed in a dishonest action, either from Count von Schimmelmann, who paid the money, or from Count Brandt, who, on the very same day thanked the king for the 50,000 dollars which he had received, to which his Majesty replied, it was but fair that he should make him a _sort_, leading to the supposition that the sum was a considerable one (see Brandt's answer to question 44, p. 250) and lastly, 3. That it could not be concealed from the king, as credit was taken for the amount in the next balance-sheet, in which the sum was again approved--I am of opinion that this circumstance cannot be regarded as dishonesty, but that everything really is as Count Struensee has explained it.