From the first discoveries of forgeries by prisoners of war, the Scottish banks chiefly affected by them had in a more or less satisfactory way combined to take steps to prevent and to punish forgeries, but it was not until they offered a reward of £100 for information leading to the discovery of persons forging or issuing their notes that a perceptible check to the practice was made. This advertisement was printed and put outside the dépôt walls for the militia on guard, a French translation was posted up inside for the prisoners, and copies of it were sent to the Agents at all parole towns. With reference to this last, let it be said to the credit of the foreign officers on parole, both in England and Scotland, that, although a Frenchman has written to the contrary, there are no more than two recorded instances of officers on parole being prosecuted or suspected of the forgery of bank-notes. (See pp. 320 and 439.) Of passport forgeries there are a few cases, and the forgery mentioned on p. 439 may have been of passports and not of bank-notes. In addition, says Mr. Macbeth Forbes, the military authorities were continually on the _qui vive_ for forgers. The governors of the different dépôts ordered the turnkeys to examine narrowly notes coming in and out of prison. The militiamen had also to be watched, as they acted so frequently as intermediaries, as for instance: ‘In November 1813 Mr. Aitken, the keeper of the Canongate Tolbooth, detected and took from the person of a private soldier in a militia regiment stationed over the French prisoners in Penicuik, and who had come into the Canongate Prison to see a friend, forged guineas and twenty-shilling notes on two different banks in this city, and two of them in the country, amounting to nearly £70. The soldier was immediately given over to the civil power, and from thence to the regiment to which he belonged, until the matter was further investigated.’ In July 1813 the clerk of the Valleyfield Dépôt sent to the banks twenty-six forged guinea notes which were about to be sold, but were detected by the turnkey.