When at length the veil that has obscured them is once drawn aside, can British benevolence withhold its exertions, to elevate the moral tone of this degraded eastern race, and to call forth the dignity of the human character, in exchange for the strange torpor and vileness in which this people are involved. Here an occasion presents for the display of a temper truly Christian, and for the erection of a standard to surrounding kingdoms, in which also these outcasts of society are dispersed, of that philanthropy and sound policy which are worthy of a great nation.
Such an experiment, though on a limited scale, may furnish various data for judging what may be effected for their countrymen, the countless myriads of British subjects, inhabiting the vast regions of Hindostan.
Alexander Fraser Tytler, late Assistant Judge in the twenty-four Pergunnahs, Bengal Establishment, in his highly important work, entitled, “Considerations on the present Political State of India,” after pointing out the depravity which prevails to an extraordinary degree among the population of India, states in the 313th page of the first volume, that “Poverty, or according to the definition of writers on Police, Indigence may be said to be the nurse of almost all crimes. To find out the causes of poverty, and to attempt their removal, must therefore be the chief object of a good police.”
It has been remarked, that this author drew his conclusions, not only from what he understood of human nature in general, but from what he daily saw before him, in the circumstances and actions of the people whose crimes he was called upon to punish. And he reasons upon the subject in the following manner: “Great poverty among the lower orders in every country, has an immediate effect in multiplying the number of petty thieves; and where the bounds of the moral principle have
been once over-stepped, however trivial the first offence, the step is easy from petty theft to the greater crimes of burglary and robbery.”
May Britons in their conduct towards the Gypsies, be actuated by a policy so liberal, as to induce the rising generation among this neglected class, to attach themselves to civil society, and to enter into situations designed to inculcate habits of industry, and prepare them to become useful members of the community.
The successful experiments lately made by the British and Foreign School Society, upon persons addicted to every species of depravity, leave no doubt of the practicability of ameliorating the condition of Gypsies. It is with pleasure that on this subject the following statement of facts is introduced, respecting two schools established in the neighbourhood of the metropolis. One of them at Kingsland, a situation which has been termed, “A focus where the most abandoned characters constantly assembled for every species of brutal and licentious disorder.” The other is at Bowyer-lane, near Camberwell, a district inhabited by persons
of the worst description; among whom the police officers have been accustomed to look for the various kinds of offenders, who have infested the Borough of Southwark.
We are informed by the Committee of that School, that “in the district embraced by their Society, the consequences of ignorance were evident to the most superficial observer. Parents and children, appeared alike regardless of morality and virtue; the former indulging in profligacy, and the latter exhibiting its lamentable effects.
“Did the friends of universal education require a fresh illustration, they would find it in the scene we are now contemplating; and they would confidently invite those who still entertain a doubt on the subject, to a more close and rigid examination of that scene, satisfied with the effect upon every candid and unprejudiced mind. For, assuredly, “men do not gather grapes of thorns, nor figs of thistles:” and when morality, decency, and order, are gradually occupying the abodes of licentiousness, misery, and guilt, the change must