Читать книгу Dissertation on the Gipseys онлайн

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When we search for similar cases, among all the different people who have quitted their mother country, and inhabited a foreign one, we do not meet with a single instance that exactly agrees with that of the Gipseys. History certainly does record accounts of people that have migrated, and remained the same in a strange country; but then this constancy has been on account of religion, either permitted by the regents, or maintained by their victorious arms: though this last circumstance has existed much less frequently than might be imagined. Many instances have occurred in which, the people subdued being more enlightened than their conquerors, the latter have adopted the manners of the former. The Romans became Greeks on the conquest of Greece; and the Franks assumed the manners of the Gauls when in possession of their country: the Mantcheous vanquished the Chinese; but Chinese customs prevailed over those of the Mantcheous. How, then, does it happen that the Gipseys, who never either established their manners and customs by force, or obtained any toleration from governments under which they lived, remain unchanged, and resemble each other exactly, in every place? There are two causes, to which this coincidence is principally owing: one is the place whence they originate, with their consequent mode of thinking; the other arises from the circumstances which have hitherto attended their situation.