An Audacious "Rate" Collector.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XV, Issue 4360, 4 March 1893, Page 2

An Audacious "Rate" Collector.

Mr Bottoinley, of Hansard notoriety, was noted as a raconteur of good tales, One of bis best yarns narrates the audacious coup of the managing clerk of a drunkon attorney. Ho in early youth served as office boy. This individual lived, to the youthful Bo'tomley's perplexity, in great lower middle class splendor. Horatio could only suppose the tippling attorney paid him a sumptuous 'salary, though why he should do so the boy could not imagine. One line morning, bowever, two stalwart constables entered the office, and conveyed the luxurious liver to Millbank Prison, It then transpired (bat this financial genius bad for years levied and collected a bogus ''county rate" upon the guileless and unsuspecting citizens of London. "It appears," says Bottomlfly, "that once upon a time the city had to pay a county rate, but that it was long ago abolished. My legal colleague, how ever ( came to the conclusion that oity people were not quite so particular as suburban householders about their rates and taxes; and, upon the principle of doing the least harm to the greatest possible number, it occurred to him that he might secure in one fell swoop a princely fortune by rolevying the rate upon his own responsibility, and quietly decamping witli whatever he might succeed in collecting before the imposition wae discovered, It is a strange satire upon the astuteness of the City that tho experiment proved so successful that,instead ofmakingoff with thefirst spoil, this daring individual actually took offices for the purposes of his scheme, where the collector attended daily at certain stated hours, and from which address the usual demand notes and first and second notices and all the other documents familiar to the ratepayer wore regularly issued. Of couso there never was Buch a lonient collector since rates and taxes were invented. Nobody was ever summoned, and needy citizens never applied in vain for an oxtension of time for payment, And so the game wont merrily on from year to year, until at length somo accident occurred, and the Oity learned how hugely it had been hoaxed, And during the whole period this financial geniuu was playing the rdlo of a simple lawyer's clerk."