However wholesome and salutary vagrant Acts may be, to deter persons from quitting their parishes in order to levy contributions, by practising impositions in places where they are not known, it is obvious that Gypsies, having no parochial settlements, cannot come under that description. Excepting a temporary residence of some of them in winter, their home is a whole county, and the majority of them are too independent to apply to any parish for assistance.
Here is a trait in their character, which, were it grafted on the stock of half the paupers in the kingdom, would be a national advantage.
It ought to procure some indulgence for the Gypsies, that their wandering mode of life does not originate in any contumacious opposition to judicial order; but in a scrupulous regard to the Institutions of their ancestors. For the advantages we possess, shall we return injury to our fellow-men! If after being fully introduced into a situation to taste the comforts of social order, and to acquire a knowledge of mechanical professions, which would render
them useful and respectable, any of them, despising these privileges, should indulge wandering dispositions, they might then deserve all the punishment which under the vagrant Acts, can be indicted.
It is worthy of remark, that in the evidence respecting mendicity in London, adduced last year before the Committee of the House of Commons, there is only a single instance in the parish called St. Giles, that noted rendezvous of Gypsies, of one of their tribe, a girl, begging in the streets.
Is it not high time the people of England were undeceived, respecting the motives to Gypsey perseverance in their singular line of conduct. Their invincible attachment to the traditions they have received, is almost proof, in itself, of Grellmann’s assertion, that they are the descendants of an Indian caste; in whose estimation inviolable adherence to the customs of their order, constitutes the highest perfection of character.
When any remark is made to them on their strange mode of conduct, they are ready to
reply: “The inhabitants of cieled houses follow the customs of their predecessors; What more do we? Are they creatures of habit? So are we.”
After this account, is it surprising that the violent means pursued against them in all countries, have been ineffectual to abolish their peculiarities?
Their humane and intelligent biographer, Grellmann, styles them a “singular phenomenon in Europe;” and it may justly be observed of such of them as inhabit countries accounted the most enlightened, that the contrast which their destitute state presents to the numerous advantages of civilized life, and to the refinements of polished society, is truly astonishing. If there possibly can be a single Briton who is a skeptic to the benefits of education, let him only take a view of the intellectual degradation and disgusting condition of the Gypsies. But if Britons have made greater advancement in civilization than some other nations, the Gypsies here are left at a greater