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New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 6235, 4 April 1881, Page 2

The art of “ working the oracle” is evidently not yet exhausted. Master minds devise new elaborations of the science, and the harvest to be gleaned from confiding dupes is of a verity one of constant renewal. The latest exemplification of the art of genteel Jeremy Diddling has come to light in Dunedin. A person named Alin has, during the last twelve months, carried on business under the style of Hancox and Co., his speciality being the distribution of watches, jewellery, and furniture through the agency of coupons art unions, resulting after twelve months enterprise in his owing his creditors £260 and his bank pass book showing a credit balance of Is. 4cl. Examined by the trustees, this enterprising Mr. Alin naively confessed that he had not kept any books except the bank pass-book, a record which he could not conveniently do without; he had commenced business with no capital and no stock, but had simply purchased or made jewellery as the coupons came in in response to advertisement, and he admitted the soft impeachment that he was also an unoertificated bankrupt, having become insolvent in Christchurch before embarking in his Dunedin enterprise. Questioned as to whether he had forwarded all the goods for which he had received coupons and the cash required, he admitted that there were two or three prizes which he had not been able to send—in fact, as bluntly put by indignant creditors, he had obtained money through the coupon system for goods which he really did not possess, had cashed post-office orders received from the country when he knew he was hopelessly insolvent, and had generally reduced his business to the system popularly known as “heads I win, tails you lose.” The meeting, so says the report, broke up after an expression of opinion that the proceedings of the debtor were of the most discreditable character, and the trustees were enjoined to make the strictest investigation. This, however, in the present state of the bankruptcy law can have no dire significance to the happy-go-lucky Mr. Alin. Out of notbinc, nothing comes, the proverb is somewhat musty but it fits Mr. Alin, alias Hancox and 00., who, his creditors finding him not worth legal powder and shot, will probably be allowed to travel to some new field of enterprise, where the specious attractiveness of his advertised announcements will lure new victims. So long as the world lasts there is likely to be no lack of confiding dupes, who will not be persuaded that no fair-dealing tradesman can give them more than honest value for their money. But why should the law be inoperative against clever schemers, or so tardy in operation that where one is brought to punishment a score of loose fish slip through the meshes and escape ?