ed; and being generally engaged in business, as small grocers or keepers of chandlers' shops and old iron and junk warehouses, they were accustomed to protect it in it's transit, from one criminal dealer to another, by means of false bills of parcels.

It would fill a volume to recount the various ramifications of this nefarious traffic, and the devices, used to defeat justice and elude the punishment of the law. Ibid.

RECEIVERS OF STOLEN GOODS.

One great hindrance to comfort in a life of agriculture, and which drives liberal-minded men, who are always the best friends to improvement, out of the profession, is the want of laws to put a total stop to the receivers of stolen goods. These are the wretches who encourage servants in agriculture, and others, to pilfer, by holding out the lure of buying every article which such servants can bring, without asking them any questions. Most things which are usually produced on a farm, from so small an article as an egg, to hay, straw, and grain, of all sorts, are daily stolen, and sold on the sides of every principal road in this county. Among the receivers are to be reckoned millers, corn-chandiers, dealers in eggs, butter, and poultry, and the keepers of chandlers' shops. The

* These thefts are committed by degrees, in a small way, seldom exceeding a truss of hay or a bushel of corn by one man at one time, and are generally of smaller articles. In some places, the stealing of gate-hooks and iron fastenings is so common, as to compel the farmer both to hang and fasten his gates with wood.

The drivers of gentlemen's carriages are intrusted to buy hay, straw, and corn, for their horses; in the doing which, they generally cheat their masters of 58. in each load of hay, of 2s.6d. in each load of straw, and is. in every quarter of corn. This gives them an interest in the consumption, makes them extremely wasteful, and brings on habits of disho nesty.

The ostlers at the inns on the sides of the roads purchase stolen hay, straw, corn, eggs, and poultry. A person who kept a horse several weeks at one of these inns, in attending occasionally to see the animal, discovered him to be fed with wheat, barley, and oats, mixed together, which could only happen by the farmers' servants robbing their mas ters, and selling the corn to the ostler.

The fields near London are never free from men strolling about in pilfering pursuits by day, and committing greater crimes by night. The depredations every Sunday are astonishingly great. There are not many gardens within five miles of London that escape being visited in a marauding way, very early on a Sunday morning; and the farmers' fields are plundered all day long of fruit, roots, cabbages, pulse, and corn. Even the ears of wheat are cut from the sheaves, and carried away in the most daring manner in open day, in various ways, but mostly in bags containing about half a bushel each. It has been moderately estimated that twenty thousand bushels of all the various sorts are thus carried off every Sunday morning, and ten thousand more during the other six days of the week; or one mil lion and a half of bushels in a year: which, if va lued at so small a sum as sixpence each, would amount to 37,500l.

The occupiers of many thousand acres round

London

London lose annually in this manner to the amount of much more than 20s. an acre.

A miller near London being questioned as to small parcels of wheat brought to his mill to be ground by a suspected person, soon after 'several barns had been robbed, answered, that any explanation on that head would put his mills in danger of being burnt. Well may the farmers say, "their property is not protected like that of other men.

Middleton. One of the chief nurseries of crimes is to be traced to the receivers of stolen property.

Without that easy encouragement which these receivers hold out, by administering immediately to the wants of criminals, and concealing what they purloin, a thief, a robber, or a burglar, could not, in fact, carry on his trade.

And yet, conclusive and obvious as this remark must be, it is a sorrowful truth, that in the metropolis alone there are at present supposed to be upwards of three thousand receivers of various kinds of stolen goods, and an equal proportion all over the country; who keep open shop for the purpose of purchasing at an under price, often for a mere trifle, every kind of property brought to them, from a nail or a glass bottle, up to the most valuable article, either new or old; and this without asking a single question.

It is supposed that the property purloined and pilfered, in a little way, from almost every family, and from every house, stable, shop, warehouse, workshop, foundery, and other repository, in and about the metropolis, may amount to about seven hundred thousand pounds in one year, exclusive of depredations on ships in the river Thames, which, before the establishment of the marine police syst

tem,

Thus the moral principle is totally destroyed among a vast body of the lower ranks of the people; for wherever prodigality, dissipation, or gaming, whether in the lottery or otherwise, occasions a want of money, every opportunity is sought to purloin public or private property: recourse is then had to all those tricks and devices by which even children are enticed to steal before they know that it is a crime, and to raise money at the pawnbrokers or the old iron or rag shops, to supply the unlawful desives of profligate parents.

.

Hence, also, servants, apprentices, journeymen, and, in short, all classes of labourers and domestics, are led astray by the temptations to spend money which occur in this metropolis; and by the facility afforded through the numerous receivers of stolen goods, who administer to their pecuniary wants, on every occasion, when they can furnish them with any article of their ill gotten plunder.

The necessity of adopting some effectual regulations respecting the numerous class of dealers in old metal, stores, and wearing apparel, is too obvious to require illustration; and the progressive accumu lation of these pests of society is proved by their having increased from about three hundred to three thousand in the course of the last twenty years, in the metropolis alone.

Similar regulations should also be extended to all the more latent receivers, who do not keep open shop, but secretly support the professed robbers and burglars, by purchasing their plunder the moment it is acquired; of which latter class there are some who are said to be extremely opulent. Colquboun.

It frequently happens that the burglars, the highwaymen, and footpad robbers, make their

contracts