The first seven Rules go to show whether a bill is from a genuine plate or
not. We now proceed to discuss _Altered Bills_. In altered bills, where a
genuine bill of a broken bank is altered by the counterfeiter to some
sound bank, there are three places in which the alteration must be made,
viz: First, the _State_; Second, _Title_, or name of the bank; and Third,
the _Town_. They are generally extracted, or the letters dissolved by some
chemical process, and the name of another bank, state, and town,
substituted in their place. The Ruling Engine shading on the genuine will
be imitated by hand in the substituted “title” and “town,” and this will
detect it as well as the clumsiness of the letters generally, and also the
white streak or bleaching of the paper around and between the substituted
letters. Sometimes the “bank” may be in the same State, and there will be
only two places to alter besides the signatures; and sometimes the broken
bank bills of the _same name or title_ are selected, (for instance the
Commercial Bank, Millington, Md.) and there will also be two places to
alter besides the signatures, viz: the “State” and “Town.” In dissolving
the signatures of the broken bank by some acid and substituting imitations
of the proper signatures, they generally look _faded_, which is caused by
a little acid still remaining in the paper--and also the whole filling up,
signatures and all, are in one handwriting. By noticing these three
points, the “State,” “Title,” and “Town,” (the Magic Three,) and the
signatures, the detection of any alteration from a broken bank will be a
very simple and easy matter. For instance, one of the best alterations,
and one that has deceived thousands of good judges when it was first
issued in 1849, were 1s, Madison County Bank, Cazenovia, N. Y. vignette
three females. The “New York Safety Fund” and “Cazenovia” were rather
clumsily lettered and the MADIS- was _shaded by hand_, while -ON COUNTY
BANK was shaded perfectly by the Ruling Engine. This shows of course an
alteration from some other name that ended in -ON; most probably CLINTON.
There was no bleaching or scratching of the paper around the substituted
letters, and the signatures were not faded, this shows that it was not an
_altered bill_ but an _altered plate_, probably a “wild cat” bank plate,
that was sold at auction, in New York, in 1841.