Gipsy Life: Being an account of our Gipsies and their children, with suggestions for their improvementSmith, George
History
Gipsy Life: Being an account of our Gipsies and their children, with suggestions for their improvement
Smith, George
Romanies -- Great Britain
All these suggestions and plans of operation may not suit English life;
be that as it may, they were suitable to the condition of the Hungarian
Gipsies, and no doubt laid the foundation for the improvement that has
taken place among them. The Hungarian Gipsies are educated, and are
tillers of the soil. If a plan similar in some respects had been carried
out with our Gipsies at the same period, we should not by this time have
had a Gipsy-tent in the country, or an uneducated Gipsy in our land.
What a different aspect would have presented itself ere this, if the
5,000 Gipsies among us had been tilling our waste lands and commons for
the last century. With proper management, these 5,000 Gipsy men could
have bought and kept under cultivation some 20,000 acres of land for the
well-being of themselves and for the good of the country. There is
neglect, indifference, and apathy somewhere. The blame will lay heavily
upon some one when the accounts are made up.
It is appalling and humiliating to think that we, as a Christian nation,
should have had in our midst for more than three centuries 15,000 to
20,000 poor ignorant Asiatic heathens, naturally sharp and clever, and
next to nothing being done to reclaim them from their worse than midnight
darkness. A heavy sin and responsibility lays at our doors. Take away
John Bunyan, a few of the Smiths, Palmers, Lovells, Lees, Hearns,
Coopers, Simpsons, Boswells, Eastwoods, Careys, Roberts, &c., and what do
we find?—a black army of human beings who have done next to
nothing—comparatively speaking—for the country’s good. They have cadged
at our doors, lived on our commons, worn our roads, been fed from our
tables, sent their paupers to our workhouses, their idiots to our
asylums, and not contributed one farthing to their maintenance and
support. Rates and taxes are unknown to them. There is only one
instance of them paying rates for their vans, and that is at Blackpool.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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