will show that crime is far from abating
among the classes of the Gipsy fraternity:--"The melancholy truth that
there exists a 'breed' of criminals in all societies was well illustrated
at Exeter this week. Sir John Duckworth, as Chairman of the Devon
Quarter Sessions, in charging the grand jury, had to tell them that the
calendar was very heavy, the heaviest, in fact, known for many years.
There were forty-five prisoners for trial, whereas the average number is
twenty-five, taking the last five years. Sir John could assign no
particular reason for such a lamentable increase, though he supposed the
prevailing depression of trade might have had something to do with it.
But he pointed out a very notable fact indeed, which sprang from an
examination of the gaol delivery, and this was that out of the forty-five
prisoners twenty had been previously convicted. Such a percentage goes
far to prove that the criminal propensity is innate, and to a certain
degree ineradicable by punishments; and this only enhances the immense
importance of national education, by which alone society can hope to
conquer the predatory tendency in certain baser blood, and to supply it
with the means and the instincts of industry. In justice, however, to
the existing generation of criminals, we ought also to remember that such
serious figures further prove the difficulty encountered by released
prisoners in living honestly. A rat will not steal where traps are set
if it can only find food in the open, and some of these twice-captured
vermin of our community might tell a piteous tale of the obstacles that
lie in the way of honesty."

The _Weekly Times_, under date October 26th, 1879, has the following
article upon the Gipsies near London. The locality described is not one
hundred miles from Mary's Place and Notting Hill Potteries. The writer
goes on to say that "There are at the present time upwards of two
thousand people--men, women, and children, members of the Gipsy
tribe--camped in the outlying districts of London. They are settled upon
waste places of every kind. Bits of ground that will ere long be
occupied by houses, waste corners that seem to be of no good for
anything, yards belonging to public-houses, or pieces of 'common' over
which no authority claims any rights; or if there are rights, the
authority is too obscure to interfere with such poor settlers as Gipsies,
who will move away again before an authoritative opinion can be
prono