The Sun.
London, England, 1835-09-17 00:00:00

SUPERSTITION.

On Tuesday, at the Hingham petty sessions, was con-
victed under the vagrant art and sentenced to 21 days' hard
labour in the castle, Isaiah Durrant, of Runhall, a small
farmer, one of those persons called " cunning men," or
fortune-tellers, who make a prof* of the folly and swersti-
tion of the ignorant and uninstructed portion of the people.
A lad of the parish of Scoulton lost his watch on the 4th
of Julya, and went the next morning to this person, and lay-
ing down a shilling, desired to know who had taken his
watch. Durrant, after consulting his books, gave hirp to
under stand that a female, of whom he gave a very unwer-
tain sort of description, bad taken it and the youth, when
he returned home, appl'ed it to a woman of good character
living in an adjoining , 'age, and accused her of theft
upon this ground. She o. nurse denied it, and her family
and friends defended her' from the charge, while the family
and friends of. the youth supported him itr the accusation,
so that much 11 blood, some assaults, and bitter quail-els,
resulted, and the peace of the hamlet was much interrupted.
At length the poor accused woman was so harassed and
annoyed that she proposed to her accusers to asogotaipany
her to the " cunning man;' this she, mig'lat clear herself.
Thithertkey went on the 25th of etaly, and after laying
down another shilling, stated their errand. Durrant again
consulted las books, and said that the woman before him
was not the thief—that the face he had seen was that of a
much younger and fairer person. Upon this they asked
him to show them the face he had seen, that they nit&
not waste their time and money by coming again with the
wrong person ; but he told them 'he could not go so far as
show them the face. Upon their return home the ouarrels
and ill-blood raised did not subside, and coming to the ears
of the clergy-alai), and some assaults arising out of the case-
being brought before a neighbouring magistrate, the con-
stable of tjie pariah was directed to institute proceedings
before the petty sessions against Durrant, as the author of
all this mischief. He was convicted upon the above facts
as a rogue and vagabond under the Vagrant Act, and
sentenced as above stated. Among the papers found in
his possession -was a sheet covered on bOth sides by figures
and hieroglyphics, beaded with the following memoran-
dums of instructions upon it, apparently from some custo-
mer—" A fat dark-haired girl." " You must tell her the
dark man love her—tailman will deceive her, and she have
been keeping bad hours this last week with bins—and you
had a letter this morning from the dark man in anger ; the
• dark man will not be deceived." Here is the first step to
• the ruin of an innocent girl.
The two women who were executed for poisoning after
the last assizes appeared to have been first led astray by the
deceptions ,of a cunning woman, who pandered to the un-
hallowed passions which plunged them into sin and ruin,
and who actually accompanied one of them when she pur-
chased the poison to kill her husband. It is a lamentable
fact that these impostors abound in every part of the
county, and that much of the vice and crime which dis-
grace it is to be traced ultimately to them. It is most
desirable, therefore, that time magistrates should use their
earnest and persevering efforts to put them down by a strict
execution of the laws. It is not necessary for a conviction
to prove that the impostor took money.--Vorfolle Chronicle.

LARGE INVESTMENT IN LAND.—The extensive
freehold domains in North Wales, near to New Town, and
the Montgomery Canal (the largest Estate which has been
in the market this year) is to be sold by George Robins on
the 6th of next month ; it is the property of Wm. Pugh,
Esq., who has sacrificed fifty thousand pounds by his noble
feelings, in aid of the canal, and which by his means and per-
severing industry alone, has been completed. From peculiar
circumstances, not material to be adverted to in this place,
it is now to be sold, WITHOUT A LIMIT* PRlCE—theFe aro
27 farms including Three Thousand Five Hundred Acres
of the best land lb the County, to he appropriated to the
uncertain fate of the hammer. On the 13th, Mr. Robins
has the sale of near 2,000 Acres of rich land in Stafford-
shire, close to the Potteries, extra parochial and tithe free,
with coals to a considerable extent.. And, on the 3d of
October, he has to sell at Cardiff, Thirteen Hundred Acres
of Land for the, Marquisvf Bute, away from his large
estates : the present low renal of these estates approaches
TWELVE THOUSAND POUNDS S YEAR, affording (to use
his own words) a capital opiCtunity to exchange Three
per Cents acrd its sncertrsin tellitre. at 91, to Land, which
will return full .Three and a Eau per Cent., beside •prospez-
tive advantages which the most sanguine fundholder e,annot
contemplate.
Three unions under the New Poor Law Act have
been formed in Dnrsetshire, at Poole, Cranbourne, and
Wimbourne ; the measure having been carried into effect
by E. C. Tuffnell, E3q. Another union is in forwardness
at Shaftesbury. Three conaerable unions are also in p .
gress in Wiltshire, at Aldeibury, Amesbury, anti
In the course of a few months similar arrangements wilbe
complete,cl for the whole of the West of England.

INCENDIARY i IRE.—James Joy was finally ex-
amined on Friday last before the Canterbury Magl.trats,
and fully committed to St. Aug,uStinc's, to await his trial
at the assizes,- charged with wilfully setting fire to two
wheat stacks on the farm at Sturry Court, the property of
Mr. Thomas Rammell, on Monday the 7th instant. The
prisoner appeared about twenty years of age, and was
quite collected during the examination of the witnesses.
There Was nothing particularly remarkable in his features,
which are plain and somewhat heavy, but bearing no indi-
cation to warrant a plea of idiotey in his favour. Hp was
attired as a labouring man, with a short gaberdine reaching
down to his loins. Ile listened to the proceedings with
some degree of interest, but neither asked questions of the
witnesses nor made observations upon the evidence, which,
according to a confes,sion of the prisoner, brings the case
home to him. The Norwich I.lljoa Fire Oilice, with
whom the corn was insured, have declined to proceed
against the prisoner, and wz understand the prosecution
will be instituted by-the East Kent society for the preven-
tion and detection of incendiarism.—Kentick Gazett,

vvit!