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Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 28, 3 February 1899, Page 5

! The Bunk of England occasionally have windfalls which do not appear in their public, accounts. Oue such has just come to hand in the form of a note for £25, issued 140 years ago. Calculated at compound interest at 5 per cent., this represents an accumulated sum of £23,000. Its history is not traceal le, but having cashed the note the directors have permitted themselves the luxury of having it framed and added to their store of curiosities. Among these is a banknote for £3000. On the back is an endorsement dated .Inly, 1840, Avritten and signed by Alexander Cochrane, afterwards Lord Dundonald. In the year, before Waterloo, the gallant sailor who had destroyed the French fleet in the Aix Roads was accused and convicted of. a stock-jobbing fraud. Pie was ordered, as part of his sentence, to pay a fine of £2000. This he did, but on the. back of the note tendered in payment was an emplutic declaration that he had been unjustly condemned. Eighteen years later his sentence was annulled, and Cochrane, who by the death of his father had just become Earl of Dundonald, was restored to his rank in the British Navy. A memento of this in some respects precursor of the Dreyfus case is jealously guarded in the private parlour of the Bank of England, where the note with its angry endorsement is framed.