nces, public opinion has
naturally run high, and it has been provided that any habitual tramp
making his way from place to place, without earning an honest livelihood,
shall be liable to imprisonment with hard labour for a period of twelve
months; and that tramps who enter dwellings without permission, who carry
fire-arms, or other weapons, or who threaten to injure either persons or
property, shall be put to work in the common penitentiary for a period of
three years. Pennsylvania in this is but reverting to the old law of
England in the Tudor days. In the time of Henry VIII. vagrants were
whipped at the cart's tail, without distinction of either sex or age.
The whipping-post, together with the stocks, was a conspicuous ornament
of every parish green, and it was not until the year 1791 that the
whipping of women was expressly forbidden by statute. There were other
enactments even more severe. By an act of Elizabeth idle soldiers and
marines, or persons pretending to be soldiers or marines, wandering about
the realm, were held _ipso facto_ guilty of felony, and hundreds of such
offenders were publicly executed. Another act of the same kind was
directed against Gipsies, by which any Gipsy, or any person over fourteen
who had been seen or found in their fellowship, was guilty of felony if
he remained a month in the kingdom; and in Hale's 'Pleas of the Crown' we
learn that at one Suffolk Assizes no less than thirteen Gipsies were
executed on the strength of this barbarous act, and without any other
reason or cause whatever.

"The ancient severity of our Statute Book has long since been modified,
and the worst that can now befall 'idle persons and vagabonds, such as
wake on the night and sleep on the day, and haunt customable taverns and
ale-houses, and routs about; and no man wot from whence they come ne
whither they go,' is a brief period of hard labour under the provisions
of the Vagrant Act. Under this comprehensive statute are swept together
as into one common net a vast variety of petty offenders, of whom some
are deemed 'idle and disorderly persons,' other 'rogues and vagabonds,'
and others again 'incorrigible rogues.' Under one or other of these
heads are unlicensed hawkers or pedlars; persons wandering abroad to beg
or causing any child to beg; persons lodging in any outhouse or in the
open air, not having any visible means of subsistence, and not giving a
good account of themselves; persons playing or bettin