I presume that no one will question the assertions that Bunyan was a tinker, and that English “tinkers” are simply Gipsies of more or less mixed blood. Put together these three ideas—his description of his “father’s house,” and their not being Jews, but tinkers, that is, Gipsies of mixed blood—and you have the evidence or proof that John Bunyan was of the Gipsy race. If people are _hanged_ on circumstantial evidence, cannot the same kind of proof be used to explain the language which Bunyan used to _remind_ the world who and what he was, at a time when it was death by law for being a Gipsy, and “felony without benefit of clergy” for associating with them, and odious to the rest of the population? From all that we know of Bunyan, we could safely conclude that he was not the man to leave the world in doubt as to who and what he was. He even _reminded_ it of what it _knew well_; but with his usual discretion he abstained from using a word that was banned by the law of the land and the more despotic decree of society, and concluded that it perfectly understood what he meant, although there was no necessity, or even occasion, for him to do what he did. {12} Why then say that there is an “absolute want of evidence” in regard to Bunyan having been of the Gipsy race, and that it is “totally incapable of proof”; and assert that it is a _fact_ that his ancestors were “landed proprietors,” and that there might be better grounds for holding that Bunyan was of _Norman_ origin than of _Gipsy_ descent? Bunyan was either of the Gipsy race (of mixed blood) or of the native one. I have given the proof of the former—proof which, I think, is sufficient to hang a man. Where is the proof of his having been something else than of the Gipsy race? And if there is no proof of that, why assert it? What Bunyan said of his family was _proof_ that he was _not_ of the _native_ race. Asserting as a _fact_ that, from the surname, his ancestors were ordinary natives of England, and landed proprietors at that, is nearly as unreasonable as to maintain that every English Gipsy of the name of Stanley is nearly related to the Earl of Derby because _his_ name is Stanley. Like any one charged with an offense unbecoming Englishmen, almost any of them will protest that _he_ has no prejudice against the name of Gipsy, and that “he would not have the smallest objection to believe that Bunyan was one of the race if the fact was only proved by sufficient evidence”; while at the same time he will retain and manifest his prejudices, and entirely ignore the evidence, or refuse to say in what respect it is deficient, and believe the opposite, or something entirely different from it, without a particle of proof in its favour, or entirely _disproved_ by Bunyan’s admission in regard to his “father’s house.”