distance, and furnish the more occasion for their condition being improved.
It does not appear that the Pariars, or Suders, from whom it is believed these swarthy itinerants of our age are descended, were farther advanced in the knowledge of moral obligations, than were the Spartan people; who, however celebrated for some of their Institutions, accounted the successful perpetration of thefts to be honourable.
The Gypsies at Kirk Yetholm, as stated by Baillie Smith, in this part of their conduct, are an exact counterpart of the Spartans. To a people of Greece, the foremost of their time in legislative arrangements, who had cultivated so little sense of the turpitude of injustice, surely a much more criminal neglect may be imputed, than to the ignorant, untutored race we have been surveying!
Malcolm, in his Anecdotes of the manners and customs of London, p. 350, says of the English Gypsies: “Despised, and neglected, they naturally became plunderers and thieves to obtain a subsistence.” But when he afterward
states, that “They increased rapidly, and at length were found in all parts of the country,” we may be disposed to think that British fastidiousness was not less ingenious than that of the Spaniards, who considered themselves contaminated by a touch of the Gypsies, unless it were to have their fortunes told. Venality and deception meeting with so much encouragement, those propensities of the human heart would be generated and fostered, which at length produced flagrant impositions, and the greatest enormities.
The dominion of superstition was at its zenith, in what are termed the middle ages: so absolute and uncontrolled was its influence, that because of reputed skill in exorcism and witchcraft, the deluded Germans reposed implicit confidence in persons so ignorant as the Gypsies.
What an impeachment of British sagacity, is the following observation of Sir Frederick Morton Eden, in his first volume on the State of the Poor, p. 146: “It is mortifying to reflect, that whilst so many wise measures were adopted by the great Council of the Nation,
neither a Coke, nor a Bacon, should oppose the law suggested by royal superstition, for making it felony to consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed, or reward, any evil, or wicked spirit, 2d James, 12th.—It is still more mortifying to reflect, that the enlightened Sir M. Hale left a man for execution, who was convicted on this Act, at Bury, March 10th, 1664; and that even in the present (the 18th) century, a British Jury should be persuaded that the crime of witchcraft could exist.”
If the annual filling of prisons in England may be attributed, in any degree, to the neglect of educating the lower orders of the people, it will appear extraordinary, that instances of Gypsies being convicted of capital crimes, are not more frequent, rather than that they sometimes occur.
The Committee of the British and Foreign School Society, in their Report for 1815, express their conviction of the advantages of education, in correcting evils, which at once disgrace society, and deprive it of many, who might be its most useful and active members;