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.

J. P., in a letter from Cambridge to the Christian Observer, very
feelingly states the case of a Gypsey family, the father of which, being
a travelling tinker and fiddler, intimated, he would be glad to have all
his children brought up to some other mode of life, and even to embrace
some other himself; but he finds a difficulty in it. Not having been
brought up in husbandry, he could not go through the labour of it; and
few, if any persons, would be willing to employ {248} his children, on
account of the bad character which his race bears, and from the censure
and ridicule which would attach to the taking of them."

There appears so little probability of any useful change being effected
in the nomadic habits of adult Gypsies, that it seems better to bear with
that propensity for some time longer, than by directly counteracting it,
so disturb the minds of parents, as to indispose them to consent to the
education of their children. There are thousands of other people in the
nation, who, more than half their time, live out of doors in like manner.
Were they all obliged to take out licences, this measure might operate in
some degree as a check upon them; at least it would be a tacit
acknowledgment of a controlling power, and might admit of some regulation
of their conduct. At present, numbers of them resemble a lawless
banditti, and ma