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 may not inaptly be termed, _Imperium in imperio_.
It appears by J. P.’s letter from Cambridge, that six years ago, he had engaged a Gypsey boy to be sent to a school on the Belleian and Lancasterian plan. At that time, the system had been but little appropriated in the country to the instruction of girls; and the application of it to boys only, would have been doing the work by halves. But the time seems now to have arrived, when the minds of Gypsies have generally received an impression in favor of the education, both of their sons and daughters, as has been manifest in various parts of this Survey; and that some of those who lodge in London, have been themselves at the expense of sending their children to school. But if all of them could be thus taught, three months in a year, would not their running wild the other nine, under the influence of dissolute and unrestrained example, be likely to defeat every purpose of instruction.