BAIT FOR SHARKS.
NOTHING can be more surprising than the success of swindlers, if we only leave out of the account the voracious appetite for gain of traders, or the happy credulity of abject toadeaters. A shark takes a hook with a red rag ; our land produce of similar stomachs bite at any thing which bears the flimsiest promise of advantage. In ninety-nine swind- ling cases out of a hundred, there is in fact a knave on either side ; the only difference in the morality is, that the one is biter, and the other hit. The tradesman, like the shark, in his eagerness for a prize, snaps at rubbish, and catches a hook. Nothing is too improbable for a bait. An example is now going the circuit of the press.
A respectable gentleman of Liverpool travels in the coach to that place in company with a young gentleman in a " shabby genteel dress, who talks prodigally of great folks, and ultimately gives himself out to be Lord CLoemisocx, an Irish peer- He says he is on his way to Ireland ; and that his servants, carriages, and horses, are to meet him at Liverpool. The "respectable gentleman" is so besotted with the idea of making an acquaintance with a lord, though an Irish one, as to overlook the strange circumstance of the said lord's travelling in the coach to meet his equipage, which might so much more agreeably and consistently with lordly usage have carried him to the same common destination. When the lord arrives at his journey's end, there are of course neither servants nor carriages awaiting him ; but he contents himself with damning them, and reconciles himself to a new outfit at Liverpool, as, like the Prince of Denmark, he is " set naked on the coast." He then goes about buying horses to carry to Ireland, in default of the punctual arrival of his own stud, and for the mere plea- sure of having to convey them across the water ; and he inquires for a tailor to build his lordship (accustomed to SruLz ) a suit of Liverpool clothes. None of these prodigies in the conduct of a lord excited the least suspicion ; and the " shabby genteel " Irish peer was only dis- covered to be a counterfeit by the accident of his being espied by a young lawyer, who had before seen him at the bar of a court of justice for swindling We must not omit to mention, that the lord was enter- tained by his "respectable" Liverpool fellow-traveller, who introduced his lordship to his friends ; and they were, says the story, greatly pleased with his lordship's knowledge of fashionable life. Now, who does not perceive that the huge coveting of the " respectable Liverpool gentle- man " for the acquaintance of a lord, laid him open to this clumsy im- posture ? But " clumsy imposture" we have no right to style it, for such as it was, it was adapted to its object, and succeeded as far as the art was concerned. The swindlers doubtless know with whom they have to deal ; and that any sort of pretext is sufficient where a strong ap- petite of any kind, whether sordid or sycophantic, blinds the judgment, and disposes to credulity.
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