The principal inhabitants of this place are Jews, and they obtain supplies from the numerous itinerant collectors from all quarters of London and its suburbs, whom you must have observed parading the streets from the earliest hour of the morning, crying _Ould clothes--Clothes sale_." "It surely can hardly be a trade worth following," said Talltho.
"There are many hundreds daily wandering the streets, however," replied Tom, "in pursuit of cast-off apparel, rags, and metals of different sorts, or at least pretend so.

The Jews are altogether a set of traders.
I do not mean to confine my observations to them only, because there are persons of other sects employed in the same kind of business; and perhaps a more dangerous set of cheats could ~309~~ scarcely be pointed at, as their chief business really is to prowl about the houses and stables of people of rank and fortune, in order to hold out temptations to their servants, to pilfer and steal small articles not likely to be missed, which these fellows are willing to purchase at about one-third of their real value.

It is supposed that upwards of 15,000 of these depraved itinerants among the Jews are daily employed in journeys of this kind; by which means, through the medium of base money and other fraudulent dealings, many of them acquire property with which they open shops, and then become receivers of stolen property; the losses thus sustained by the public being almost incalculable-- "For wid coot gould rings of copper gilt--'tis so he gets his bread, Wit his sealing-vax of brick-dust, and his pencils without lead." It is estimated that there are from fifteen to twenty thousand Jews in the Metropolis, and about five or six thousand more stationed in the great provincial and seaport towns.

In London they have six Synagogues, and in the country places there are at least twenty more.

Most of the lower classes of those distinguished by name of German or Dutch Jews, live principally by their wits, and establish a system of mischievous intercourse all over the country, the better to enable them to carry on then-fraudulent designs in every way.