has been little better than beating the air, and it may be repeated a thousand times, but if nothing further is done more than “pity,” the Gipsies will be worse off in fifty years hence than they are now, nor will presenting to them bread, cheese, ale, blankets, stockings, and a dry sermon, as Mr. Crabb did half a century ago, render them permanent help. We must do as the eagle does with her young: we must cause a little fluster among them, so that they may begin to flounder for themselves. Take them up, turn them out, and teach them to use their own wings, and the schoolmaster and sanitary officers are the agencies to do it. The men are clever and can get money sufficient to keep their families comfortable even at skewer-making and chair-mending, &c., if they will only work. All the police-officer must do will be to take charge of those who prefer to fall to the ground rather than to struggle for life with its attendant pleasures and enjoyments. The State has taken in hand a more dangerous class—perhaps the most dangerous—in India, viz., the Thugs, and is teaching them useful trades and honest industry with most encouraging results. Before the Government tackled them, they were idling, loafing, rambling, and robbing all over the country, alike to our Gipsies; now they have settled down and become useful and good citizens. In Norway the Gipsies are put into prison, and there kept till they have learnt to read and write. In Hungary the Government has appointed a special Minister to look after them, and see that they are being properly educated and brought up. In Russia, the laws passed for their imprisonment has had the effect of causing them, to a great extent, to settle down to useful trades, and they are forming themselves into colonies. And so, in like manner, in Spain, Germany, France, and other European countries, steps have been taken to bring about an improvement among them. In these countries nearly the whole of the Gipsies can read and write; and we, of all others, who ought to have set the example a century ago in the way of educating the Gipsy children, have stood by with folded arms, and let them drift into ruin. I claim it to be our duty—and it will be to our shame if we do not—to see to the welfare of the Gipsy children for four reasons. First, that they are Indians, and under the rule of our noble Queen; second, that they are in our midst, and ought to take their share of the blessings, duties, and responsibilities pertaining to the rest of the community; third, that as a Christian nation, professing to lead the van and to set forth the blessings of Christianity and civilisation; and, fourth, their universal desire for the education of their children, and to contribute their quota, however small, to the country’s good, and for the eternal welfare of their own children; and I do not think that there will be any objection on their part to it being brought about on the plan I have briefly sketched out.