EIGHTEEN PENN’ORTH OF SNUFF.

The following advertisement lately appeared in the Halesworth Times:-

Profitable employment. – Persons in search of employment, either as a source of income or to fill up their leisure hours, may hear of such, by which means £2 to £4 a week may be realised in town or country by either sex, station in life immaterial, by applying to Mr. H. Harvey, 35, Upper Belgrave Place. Pimlico, London, enclosing eighteen postage stamps, with a stamped directed envelope for reply.”

This notification was given to the reporters by the Magistrate of the Westminster Police Court, Mr. Paynter, to whom it had been sent by a gentleman who had tried the experiment of writing to Mr. Harvey and enclosing a fee of eighteen postage stamps, to see what would come of it. Nothing came; no reply to the first letter, nor any to two others afterwards written. Mr. Superintendent Gibbs, B, sent by Mr. Paynter to look after Mr. Harvey, of course discovered that “no such person as Mr. Harvey resided at 35, Upper Belgrave Place, Pimlico.” The Superintendent was, however, informed that letters addressed to that gentleman “were regularly fetched away by a man well known as one of a gang of persons who had for a length of time been carrying on a system” described as “of this sort;” which may perhaps be supposed to mean a system of obtaining money under false pretences.

Mr. Harvey, of somewhere else than 35, Upper Belgrave Place, Plimlico, and rejoicing peradventure in an alias as well as an alibi, must not be indistinetly pronounces a rogue. He differs, at any rate, from a common rogue, and though he may be deemed an uncommon rogue, there is some doubt whether he is exactly a rogue in law. Those who send him eighteen postage stamps, and receive no reply are answered by his silence. By saying nothing, he tells them that he has got the stamps: which would have been returned by the Post Office, if he had not received them. They are thus instructed that, if they are seeking a source of income, they may find it in postage stamps, and that, if they wish to fill up their leisure hours, they may follow his example, and employ all or part of the time at their disposal in putting advertisements such as his own in the provincial papers. Are the pretences on which money is thus obtained false? We must recollect the lesson inculcated on our youthful minds by the copy-books, and “Condemn not hastily.”

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