Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/232

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216
RESPECTABLE RECEIVERS.

the commission: Such "take the benefit,"[1] as it is too briefly called.

Goods obtained in the manner we have before alluded to, and paid for in their "own acceptances," they sell for cash, at thirty, forty, or fifty per cent, loss, to auctioneers, to Jews, and the receivers of stolen goods, unless when they are shipped off to America, there to wait the Swindler's coming, annong congenial minds to dwell.

However strange it may seem to our readers, there live in great apparent respectability, not to say splendour, man}^ men who deal largely in stolen goods; and we could walk all the way from London Bridge to Limehouse-hole without once losing sight of some one or other great man's house, who, before the formation of the Docks, was not a great rogue in that way,—knowingly guilty. People may be found in every rank and station, who do not resist the temptation of buying cheap, without reflecting how the goods were come by; or if the reflection does arise, they stiffle it at the birth in the abundance of their cupidity. Wholesale dealers, too, of high and untouchable character, there are, who do

  1. ——"of the Act for the relief of Insolvent debtors," should be understood; but cramp words and half sentences are generally used to soften down crime.