The Sun.
London, England, 1844-10-21 00:00:00

AGRICULTURAL POVERTY.

Having lately visited a part of the country on the
borders of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, and
only a few miles from the Duke of Buckingham, I
took some interest in observing the condition of the
agricultural labourers in that neighbourhood. Had I
not beheld those poor people, I could not have credited
a true description of their state. Where the manu-
facture of straw plait is carried on, you will now see a
great many of the grown-up lads, and even the men,
engaged in it, in consequence of the want of employ
on the farms. And yet that business is overdone;
the men and the lads are, evidently, not at all wanted
in it, but turn to the employment merely from having
nothing else to do. Their next move is, into the
union house.
It is a difficult thing to depict, in a few words, the
vppearances of the misery here exhibited. We may
say " very, very poor," "excessively poor," and so
forth, using any general terms you please, which,
after all, can only express such depth of distress as
might occur to any body from accidental circum-
stances, and in a short time. It needs minuteness of
description, to those who have not beheld it, to repre-
sent the character of the poverty seen here, which ap-
proaches very nearly
lowest depth of wretchednessit
which you find in the

most despotic States on the continent of Europe. The
mud-matte huts or hovels are for pigs to live
in, and the eiistente of such dwellings *for human
beings i$ a disgrace td °Ur tornmtin toiititry..4ture
especially to tnat part or It itherkisuch things are
seen—and still more especially to those great torus
of the soil who inhabit that part, and who
make so many loud pretensions of solicitude for the
people on the land. The raggedness and the filth of
that people is surpassed, I should suppose, nowhere
but in Ireland. But it was the lords of the land who
brought Ireland to her present state ; and, therefore,
why may we not expect them to produce the same
here, if they are allowed ? There is a squalidness
which looks almost like the plague—denotes the suf-
fering either of dreadful disease or long-continued
famine. And this is in England I and in Bedford
and Buckingham ! 1 two of the counties the most ex-
elusively possessed by those who call themselves
" farmers' friends," and who demand " protection ! ! 1"
In the counties to which I allude, and where the
people are thus suffering, the land is nothing like
fully cultivated, and it requires no more than for the
people to be allowed to till it properly, to furnish
them all with abundance of food.—October 12.
(From a Correspondent of the Wiltshire Independent.)

POLICE INTELLIGENCE.
(SATURDAY.)
WORSHIP -STREET. _ _

Samsel Edge, a tall, thin personage, and Charlotte
Edge, his wife, were brought before the Magistrate
by Sergeant Dubois, and charged with being part of
the very numerous gang of swindlers who have de-
frauded tradespeople to an almost incredible extent in
all parts of the metropolis and environs, and two
parties, of whom seven or eight in numbhr are al-
ready in custody, at this Couri, upon many charges,
The female prisoner was first charged with having
been concerned with Henry Miller and Sarah Dewar,
alias Miller, his reputed wife, in obtaining no less than
seventeen very expensive bonnets, from Mr. Feats, a
tradesman at Hammersmith.
Miller and the woman Dewar, who passed as his
wife, had hired one of a set of cottages in that neigh-
bourhood, called Peter's-cottages, for three years cer-
tain, but after a few weeks' occupation, during which
they kept up a dashing appearance, and gave extensive
orders to all the neighbouring tradespeople, they shut
up the house and removed away clandestinely in the
night-time, and afterwards sent the keys to the lodg-
ing by another of the gang named Smith, jun., who
had the impudence to demand a sovereign for his
trouble in delivering them, but was given into custody
and the keys taken from him. The day before they
so disappeared they obtained the seventeen bonnets
from the shop of Mr. Peat, and upon their apprehen-
sion lately in Harvey-street, Holton, two of the
bonnets were found in their possession, together with
a variety of silk and other dresses, false fronts and
ringlets, &c., in which the females of the gang were
in the habit of disguising themselves in their preda-
tory visits to the different tradespeople whom they
victimised.

Mary Anne Gibbins, shopwoman to Mr. Peat,
identified the female prisoner now at the bar as having
enacted the part of servant to the others at Peter's-
cottages, and received the bonnets.
The two prisoners were then charged with having
been concerned with the others in defrauding Mr.
Mussared, at Hammersmith, of boots and shoes.
Miller and the male prisoner, whom he introduced
as his nephew, first ordered boots and shoes for them-
selves, and when they were taken to the cottage fur-
ther orders were given for the females of the family,
and a number of pairs of boots and shoes supplied,
after which another order was given for some more,
which were to be delivered by a particular day, but
before the time arrived the whole party had dis-
appeared.
Mr. BROUGHTON remanded the two prisoners for
re-examination with the others.