for their improvement, the
sooner will this desirable work be accomplished.

The reader is requested to pay particular attention to the following
suggestions.

The establishment of an Institution to supply instruction to the Gipsies
by regular Ministers, or Missionaries, would be of but little use.
Indeed such a measure could scarcely be carried into effect. For the
Gipsies, beside associating in very small companies, are perpetually
driven from place to place. To supply them, therefore, with regular
instruction, a preacher would be necessary to every family; who would
condescend to their mode of life, travel when they travelled, rest when
they rested, and be content with the ground and straw for his bed, and a
blanket tent for his covering! All this would subject them to great
personal inconvenience, and at the same time be very expensive and highly
improper. Neither would it be possible for ministers to be appointed
occasionally and alternately to visit the Gipsies in different counties.
For it might often happen that, before intelligence could be forwarded to
those appointed to give them instruction, they might be removed by a
peace officer, or have set out on a journey of several miles distance.
Benevolent, zealous, and prudent persons may do much by visiting the
camps near towns; and the most suitable parts of the day for promoting
this object, are morning and evening. But the most simple and easy plans
of instruction should invariably be adopted.

To those persons who are afraid of visiting the Gipsies, lest they should
be insulted, abused, and robbed, the author may be allowed to say that
they have not the least grounds for such fears. In Scotland this fear is
quite as general among the religious people as it is in England; and in
that country the inhabitants are even afraid to prosecute them for their
depredations and crimes. In England ladies are frequently known to visit
their camps singly, when more than a mile from towns, and to sit and read
and converse with them for a considerable time, with the greatest
confidence and safety.

There is not the least prospect of doing them good, by forcing
instruction upon them. About the year 1748, the Empress Theresa
attempted the improvement of the Gipsies in Germany, by taking away, by
force, all their children of a certain age, in order to educate and
protect them; but such an unnatural and arbitrary mode of benevolence,
defeated its own object; and this