The following anecdote will prove the frequent oppression of this people. Not many years since, a collector of taxes in a country town, said he had been robbed of fifty pounds by a Gipsy; and being soon after at Blandford in Dorsetshire, he fixed on a female Gipsy, as the person who robbed him in company with two others, and said she was in man's clothes at the time. They were taken up and kept in custody for some days; and had not a farmer voluntarily come forward, and proved that they were many miles distant when the robbery was said to be perpetrated, they would have been tried for their lives, and probably hanged. The woman was the wife of Wm. Stanley, (who was in custody with her,) who now reads the Scriptures in the Gipsy tents near Southampton. Their wicked accuser was afterwards convicted of a crime for which he was condemned to die, when he confessed that he had not been robbed at the time referred to, but had himself spent the whole of the sum in question. Another Gipsy of the name of Stanley was lately indicted at Winchester, for house-breaking, and had not his friends at great expense proved an _alibi_, it is likely he might have been executed. And in this way have they been suspected and persecuted ever since the days of Henry the Eighth. They have been hunted like wild beasts; their property has been taken from them; themselves have been frequently imprisoned, and in many cases their lives taken, or what to many of them would be much worse, they have been transported to another part of the world, for ever divided from their families and friends. In the days of Judge Hale, thirteen of these unhappy beings were hanged at Bury St Edmonds, for no other cause than that they were Gipsies; and at that time it was death without benefit of clergy, for any one to live among them for a month. Even in later days two of the most industrious of this people have had a small pony and two donkeys taken away merely on suspicion that they were stolen. They were apprehended and carried before a magistrate, to whom they proved that the animals were their own, and that they had legally obtained them. The cattle were then pounded for trespassing on the common, and if their oppressed owners had not had money to defray the expenses, one of the animals must have been sold for that purpose. Not long ago, one of the Gipsies was suspected of having stolen lead from a gentleman's house. His cart was searched, but no lead being found in his possession, he was imprisoned for three months, for living under the hedges as a vagrant; and his horse, which was worth thirteen pounds, was sold to meet the demands of the constables. And another Gipsy, who had two horses in his possession, was suspected of having stolen them, but he proved that they were legally his property. He was committed for three months as a vagrant, and one of his horses was sold to defray the expenses of his apprehension, examination, &c.