The circumstances which led to the prosecution which succeeded against him are remarkable.--In the latter end of May 1825, Peele visited Tunbridge Wells, and presenting himself at the banking-house of Messrs. Beeching and Son, he said he had taken a house at the Wells for five months, and wished to know whether they had any objection to open an account for him during that period. They consented, and he presented two bills of exchange for 30_l._ and 35_l._ purporting to be accepted by Coutts and Co. in London. The bills were immediately discounted by Messrs. Beeching, through their clerk, and Peele endorsed the name "George Watson" upon them, and received the amount in cash. As a further inducement to Messrs. Beeching and Son to open an account with him, and to give colour to his practices, he gave to them a deposit-note of the Carlisle bank in his favour for 275_l._ 11_s._ 6_d._, which he wished them to present to that bank through Masterman and Co., who were their London agents as well as the agents of the Carlisle bank. The deposit-note was accordingly sent down to Messrs. Connell and Co. at Carlisle; but they in due course apprised Messrs. Masterman that it had been obtained from them for a bill of exchange, for which Peele had got besides a considerable sum of money, but which, on its maturity, was discovered to be a forgery. It was wondered how the prisoner could get acquainted with the signatures and mode of business of the different parties whose names he used; but, upon inquiry, it was found that he had invariably presented himself to the notice of the bankers in the places where he negotiated the bills, by taking to them bank-notes, and getting in exchange bills on some London house; and he took care to select those bills which had many names upon them, the whole of which he would immediately copy in twenty different ways on various bills, and having done so, he would take the genuine bills, and others of his own manufacture, to the banking house, where the good bills never failed to be a passport to those which were spurious. Thus he sometimes made the genuine paper subservient to his plans of passing off counterfeit, and sometimes the latter, as in the case of the Carlisle Bank, subservient to the procuring of genuine bills, and both with uninterrupted success. In addition to the bills on Connell and Co., Peele also deposited with Messrs. Beeching two other bills,--one for 30_l._, purporting to be drawn by Alexander and James Liddell, of Dundee, and accepted by Messrs. Robinson and Brown, of Glasgow; and the other for 37_l._ 11_s._ 6_d._ dated Antigua, 15th of February; and purporting to be drawn by Nathaniel Underwood, upon and accepted by Messrs. J. Bell and sons, of Leith. His professed object in this deposit, was merely that the bills should be in safe custody, but he contrived to get upon them an advance of 20_l._, for which he drew a check in his assumed name of "George Watson," and on