It has appeared in Section IX, that Riley Smith, a chief of the Northamptonshire Gypsies, after marrying the cook out of a gentleman’s family, and obtaining a farm, quitted it, to resume musical performances.
Conformity to agricultural employments, could not be effected in Gypsies, by the most rigorous measures to which the Empress Theresa, and the Emperor Joseph II. resorted.—Much less could it be expected that persons, who, all their lives, have accustomed themselves to be in the open air, or others who have lived three parts of the year in this manner, should be induced, in open weather, to brook the restraint of houses.
Those who have houses at Kirk Yetholm, quit them in spring: men, women, and children,
set out on their peregrinations over the country, and live in a state of vagrancy, until driven back to their habitations by the approach of winter; and it appears, in all countries to which the Gypsies have had access, that a similar course is pursued by them.
In a dialogue between a Curate and some Gypsies, as published in the Christian Guardian, of March, 1812, is the following question and answer:
Curate. “Could you not by degrees bring yourselves to a more settled mode of life?
Gypsey. I would not tell you a story, Sir; I really think I could not, having been brought up to it from a child.”
Upon this conversation, the Curate makes the following remark: “In order to do good among the Gypsies, we must conciliate their esteem, and gain their confidence.”
The plain and simple reply to the Curate, will put out of question the erection of villages, or the making of establishments for adults among them. In mechanical operations, to which the Gypsies are most inclined, British
artisans might be as averse to unite with them, as they were with the Jews. The Spaniards, it has appeared, are unwilling to be associated with Gypsies in any kind of occupation. Moreover, the competition of manufacturers in England, during the last fifty years, has effected by artificial means, so much saving of manual labour, and so much improvement in the division of it, that the rude operations of Gypsies, would be a subject of ridicule and contempt.