The National Register.
London, England, 1817-12-22 00:00:00

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r. THE FORTUNATE Yourm

[From tit .10ONING1 CHRONICLE. of Di•reocior is.]
Ire yesterday received the following Letter from
our Correspondent, Mr. Weatherby, of Newmarket :

" TO TIN tHITUH OF THE MORNING CHIT )stct.c.
tity letter to you of the I Ith iust.(inserted in your
paper 01 tile 13‘10, I that I had then no reason to &dit
hers thr statement which the young Man known by die de..
eription of the Fortunate Youth," and made to me, and that
the 1110111tak I had reason to alter my opinion, be would no
longer have any counts mince from me.-1 feel it now a dos
I owe 10 the public to declare, that c,remnstauces have
since occurred, which induce lee to think that I have been
grossly di celved in my opinion of him, and that Isis preten-
sions to a large property are without f.nadation. I am totally
unable to assign any adequate motive for the fablicution,
balfthe rant hiatiousof who'll the public are not, uud firob.i.
bly never will be acquainted ; butt I have 00 Ilt•SitatiOn in
declaring, that unless the imposition he the effect of a par-
tial derangement of intellect, it exhibits an instance tit earls
depravity of which there are few examples.—l am, Sir, vOlll
very obedient servant, EDWARD WEATHERDY."
Our readers will recollect the two former letters of
Mr. Weatherby. In deference to this Gentleman, who
was employed as solicitor to the youth, we agreed to
postpone theevidence in our hands, that he might have
time for inquiry, though we were satisfied that the re-
sult would justify our first conviction. It is certain
that Mr. Weatherby was the dupe of this beardless
boy ; and the credit which a solicitor of his experience
and respectability gave to the story, procured it a ready
reception in the minds of nil who knew him. This
young adept at imposition has exceeded every thing
upon record, as to the magnitude of his pretensions It'
a plan had been framed. by an inventive committee of
deception, to see how far the avidity of gain would
lead the public astray, they could not have succeeded
more perfectly than this youth of Id, without a single
accomplice, has done. The drama is truly marvellous,
and probably is not vet come to an end, for the boy
actually in Paris. The eclat of his unbounded wealth,
as we stated, has gone betbre him ; and like a second
Cagliostro, he may there boast of his philosopher's
stow:, or of what is more plausible, of his mines in
Peru, and his funds in every exchequer of Europe.
This young man's name is Abraham W. Cawston,
His father is a farmer at Chippenham, near Newmarket.
The early promise of shining talents induced his fitther
to send him to school, under the tuition of the eminent
Dr. Butler, of Shrewsbury, and there his attainments
and abilities gained him universal admiration. He was
not seventeen years of age when lie paid his addresses
to a young lady of fortune in that place, and from that
time the strange artifice or imagination of this enor-
mous fortune that had dmpt to him, as it were from
the clouds, bad birth. He first opened the wonderful
secret to his father, and the story he told was, that an
aged gentleman had, at one of his journies from home
to school, fallen in with him in a stage coach going to
Birmingham, and that he had afterwards made him a
deed of gip? of his whole fortune ! It did not in the
first disclosure, swell to the magnitude which it after-
wards attained ; but the first feeling that he ntanifest-
sd wus to settle a part of his wealth on his parents and
brother. For this purpose lie was introduced to Mr.
Weatherby, to whom he gave instructions to make a
will, and us his fortune was stated to be all personal,
Mr. Weatherby saw no objection to the deed. His
diatribution of wealth though uncommon, did not strike
Mr. %V. as improbable, so clear and consistent were the
boy's statements in their different interviews, and so
filial and brotherly were the bequests.
From this time nothing could equal the romance of
his .story, the unblushing effrontery with which he
maintained it, and the ingenious stratagems he devised
to keep up the delusion. He prevailed on his father to
enter his elder brother who is 34 years of ago, and had
been brought up in the line of farming, as a fellow
commoner of Emanuel College, Cambridge He in-
structed one solicitor to cater into a negotiation for the
purchase of several estates, and surveys had actually
been made. He applied to Government for a grant to
take the name and bear the arms of Devereaux, and the
Herald's College had begun to take steps to exemplify
the arias, and waited only for information as to which
branch of the house of Devereaux his benefactor be-
longed. He instructed another solicitor to insert tin
advertisement in the public papers, calling on the creditors
if any, of Don Gaspar de Quintilla, deceased, to bring
in vouchers of their demands, in order that they might
be forthwith liquidated. (Meaning to couple him with
Don Joachim de Quintillu, a rich Portuguese diamond
merchant.) He stated that it was his determination to
purchase ten Boroughs, that he might have twenty
Members in the House of Commons, to procure him an

Earldom.
He said that his half-yeaividend ue o the sth
Tanury next, was 9c2,0001. anr's d d
that hed held n annuities
from sevend of the crowned heads of Europe, to the
amount of millions.
He was in the habit of suffering drafts on bankers
for thousands, nay at times tin. tens and It:loth-As of
thousands, to drop from his pocket book., as if by aeci-
(lent, that they might be seen ; and he talked of loans
to persons of the highest distinction, on whose estates he

bail mortgages.
When strongly prened for an eNrlanation as to the