le of the investigating
local magistrates, and the still greater annoyance
of the inhabitants generally,--arising from the
constant nightly depredations committed on their
orchards, barns, granaries, sheep-folds, fowl-yards,
and even cellars." . . . . "In Gosfield, I am given
to understand their general character is rather
above par; . . . . while in the next adjoining
township of Mersea, so much are they disliked by
the inhabitants, that they are, in a manner,
proscribed by general consent--a colored man being
there scarcely suffered to travel along the
highroads unmolested.

"The first thing that forcibly struck me, in these
people, was a total absence of that modest and
unpresuming demeanor which I had been some how led
to expect, and the assumption, instead, of a 'free
and easy' independence of manner as well as
language toward all white inhabitants, except
their immediate employers, together with an
apparent utter indifference to being hired on
reasonable average wages, though, as already
stated, seemingly without any visible means of a
livelihood, and their also, at all times,
estimating the value of their labor on a par, if
not above that of the white man. And I had
scarcely recovered from my surprise, at such
conduct, as a private individual, when, as a
magistrate, I was still more astonished at the
great amount of not only petty offenses, but of
crime of the most atrocious dye, perpetrated by so
small a body of strangers compared with the great
bulk of the white population: and such still
continuing to be the unabating case, Session after
Session, Assize after Assize, it at length became
so appalling to my feelings, that on being placed
in the chair of the Quarter Sessions, I could not
refrain from more than once pointing to it in
strong language in my charges to the Grand Juries.
In July last year, for instance, I was led, in
connection with a particular case of larceny, to
observe . . . . 'The case itself will, I trust,
involve no difficulty so far as the Grand Jury is
concerned;