Page:The Scourge - Volume 5.djvu/19

His action at law. 7

amount. Some of these books, when he offered them for sale to certain booksellers near Finsbury, he stated to them were taken by him in lieu of cash, for works which he had written for other booksellers in the Strand, near to Charing Cross.

It would swell this article to a length which such a cha* racter does not deserve to detail all his crimes, but it will be sufficient for our purpose to state that his profligacy and excessive love of profusion induced him to make attempts upon the credulity of other tradesmen in different lines of life. For instance, he obtained from a silversmith in Fleets Treet, plate to the value of 150/. The caution of these trades-' man was lulled to rest by the knowledge of his apparently respectable character, and his being a trust-worthy man.

Having run for a length of time this race of vice, and fearful of the consequences of exposure, he fled from his house in the neighborhood of Clerkenwell, but not before his creditors had applied to certain magistrates for their opinion as to the necessity of bringing him to a criminal bar. So much of an adept was he in the quirks of law, that he had taken care by bills to avoid the fangs of a police officer (at least it was the grave opinion of the bench that he could not be made amenable to a criminal process ;) but fearful too of the civil officer, he in the language of the law "wandered up and down the country," until at length he has fixed his abode near Barbican.

This person had the hardihood about three years since to complain in a public court of justice of an attack upon his good character. His good character! Dare a man talk of his good character when proof has been adduced that he, by a series of frauds and lies, has obtained possession of honest men's goods for the purpose of turning them into cash?

He has written many books for time-serving purposes. He can either be a Methodist or a Socinian, just as it suits him for worldly purposes. He may publish his " Portraitures of different religions;" but his publications will only shew him to the world as an apostate from the cause of truth and of virtue, and a rank dissembler and hypocrite,