EMIGRATION SWINDLES.

New Zealander, Volume 9, Issue 706, 19 January 1853, Page 3

EMIGRATION SWINDLES.

[From the “Times.”] & The vast movement of emigration to Australia which is now in progress attracts the attention of that portion of the community who live by their wits, just as the presence of a shoal of herrings is designated by the greedy and clamorous seabirds who hover over these emigrants of the deep. It has taken time and trouble enough to convince the uneasy class of this country of the enormous advantages which a voyage of a few months places at their disposal ; but having been at first unreasonably sceptical, they now pass to the contrary extreme—having once persuaded themselves of the fair prospects of Australia, they are willing to believe with unsuspecting credulity every one who undertakes to speed their coui-se to the’ promised land. Of course in these days, a swindle being contemplated, the mod its operaudi is a joint stock company, a form of proceeding peculiarly as we have seen lately in several notorious instances, for the evasion of all civil and criminal responsibility for the most questionable acts. The whole proceedings, indeed, down to the very names of the projectors, forcibly remind one of the Anglo-Bengalee Insurance Company of Dickens. The two gentlemen who—as the result of the investigation before Sir Robert Carden at the Mansion-house on Saturday shows —engross all the credit of getting up the Australian Gold Mining and Emigration Company, whose offices are at fi, Austin-friars, and among whose directors we find one Irish lord and several respectable gentlemen, apparently quite unconscious of the honour which hgg.been done them, and a solicitor and secretaryliftNio means proud of the connexion with which they have been involuntarily, favoured—rejoice in the names of Henry Graham Montague (not Tigg), and, probably, Caius Julius, Tripe. These persons, on the strength of their office and their directors, have unhappily contrived to prevail upon four emigrants to trust them with £ll a-head by way of deposit of one-half of their passage money to Port Phillip, and their dupes seem to have been very slow in awaking to the deceit practised on them, as even after they were told that Mr. Montague, to whom they had paid the money, was in W hitecross-street prison, they still went on preparing to pay the remainder, and were only roused to a sense of their real situation on finding they were not to have the passage for which they had paid. Another person was defrauded out of nine pounds, paid as the deposit for the passage of his nephew. It would seem from the proceedings at the police office that another company, called the Gold Diggings Company, which proved unsuccessful, had previously occupied the same place of business, and that it was by mixing up the gentlemen who attended with regard to the concerns of the former with the proceedings of the latter that Messrs. Moril*%ue and Tripe succeeded in imposing on their dupes. The Government Emigration officer has ably done his duty, and rendered a great service to the public by exposing this scheme of heartless deception, and we have felt it our duty to call all. the attention to it we can, in hopes that %is" exposure may meet the eye of those likely to be Imposed on who might overlook the notice in our police report. Sir Robert Carden deserves credit tor