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Figure to yourself a person, in whom custom, and deep-rooted affections, are the only, and at the same time strong, impulses to action; in whose soul no new unwonted thoughts arise, in consequence of his own reflections, nor find easy admittance when proposed by others:—leave this man entirely to himself; do not permit any of those means to be used which are requisite to give a new turn to his ideas, and deep-rooted prejudices:—he must necessarily remain the same; and his latest posterity will continue like him: this is exactly the case with the Gipseys. Unused to reflect, fettered by habits, they arrived in our quarter of the globe. No state has, hitherto, done any thing for the express purpose of instructing or reforming them; except the Empress Theresa, by her regulations, which were never put in execution. On their first arrival, they procured passports, and free quarters, by their holy lies. They dispersed, begged, deceived the common people, by fortune telling: they stole: and for a long time no attention was paid to them. At last the evil grew too enormous; the complaints against them became so loud, that government was constrained to take official notice of them. Exemplary punishments were judged necessary: hanging and beheading were not sufficiently efficacious; and it was then thought expedient to banish them;—a proceeding more likely to render them worse than better, and even in other respects liable to many objections; still the custom has prevailed, down to the latest times. The neighbour, to whom these unpolished guests were sent, sooner or later, followed the same method of disengaging the evil, till, in the end, they were persecuted by almost all kingdoms and governments. Many states afterwards relaxing in their severity, the Gipseys were suffered to creep in, a few at a time, and were permitted to remain quiet: yet every one of them stood in fear, innocent or guilty, lest he might be taken unawares, merely because he was Gipsey, and delivered over to the executioner. They had been accustomed, in their own country, to live remote from cities and towns: now they became still more uniformly inhabitants of the forests, and outcasts; as, in consequence of the search which was made after them, or at least threatened to be made, they judged themselves to be more secure in deserts and concealment, than they would have been if frequenting places of established abode, and having free intercourse with the civilised inhabitants: whereby they were divested of the most, perhaps only, probable means of inducing them to change their manners. And yet, had they not sequestered themselves from other people, or had they been more inclined to mix in society, it is not likely, without some direct interference of government, that they would have been rendered better. There were two great obstacles to be surmounted:—first, by mere intercourse, it would have been, generally speaking, difficult to eradicate the prejudices and customs from their Oriental minds: secondly, being Gipseys, people would not willingly have established any correspondence with them. Let us reflect how different they are from Europeans: the one is white, the other black;—this clothes himself, the other goes half naked;—this shudders at the thought of eating carrion, the other regales on it as a dainty. Moreover these people are famed, and were even from their first appearance in Europe, for being plunderers, thieves, and incendiaries: the European, in consequence, not merely dislikes, but hates them. For the reasons above stated, the Gipseys have been, at different periods, driven from all the countries of Europe; and only a few simple people occasionally made a nearer acquaintance, in order to consult them on matters of superstition.