Examination of the claim of John Lindsay Crawfurd

14 EXAMINATION OF THE CLAIM OF
people at to an extent which proved injurious to themselves, and it is no
John" longer a matter of doubt, that John Montgomery and his family
^°" tg ° f ~ have been ruined by their connexion with him. Montgomery being
Ladeside. a weak man, was tempted by the golden prospects of the claimant's
success, to go beyond his strength in his engagements for him. Like
Sir Arthur Wardour, he believed that the next motion of the claim-
ant Was to be as successful as the next experiment of Dousterswivel.
There was no friendly Edie to suggest doubts to his credulous mind,
and he went on so believing, until he was obliged to mortgage his
little property, and expatriate himself. He made over his property
His fate, to his eldest son Peter, and went to America, where, it is said, he
his son! ° died. His son rushed into the vortex also. He gave ear to all the
stories of the claimant ; involved himself and his property deeper
than before, until it ended in his bankruptcy. Nor were the effects
of the claimant's intercourse confined to robbing these people of
their means. They saw so much artifice and falsehood in the ma-
nagement of his affairs, that they were seduced from their honest
callings, and betook themselves to more dangerous courses. Wil-
liam Montgomery, the second son of John, was transported to
Botany Bay, in the end of 1827, for issuing forged notes. Peter,
the eldest, was involved in several a ctions at law, where it was al-
leged the documents he produced and founded on were forged, and
he was repeatedly brought to the bar of the Circuit Court of Jus-
ticiary for issuing forged notes, and was at length, for this crime,
sentenced to transportation for fourteen years. His conviction
proceeded on his own judicial admission ; and a person who had
received some education, and might have been a useful member of
society, fell into the infamy of a common felon. In the claimant's
printed cases, Peter Montgomery is held up as " a young gentle-
man of respectability," and while he was ruining himself in the
claimant's cause, he received the claimant's praise ;' but when this
could be no longer the case, he was accused by the claimant and his
friends, of unfaithfulness towards him, and of fraudulently using for
his own purpose, the money which had been put into his hands in
aid of the claimant's case. 2
1 The Crawfurd Peerage, p. 267. 2 Ibid. 266.