the Gipsies continued to grow and prosper in carrying out their
nefarious practices. The case of these poor miserable wretches, midnight
prowlers, with eyes and hearts and bending steps determined upon mischief
and evil-doing, presents to us the spectacle of justice untempered with
mercy. The phial filled with revenge, malice, spite, hatred,
extermination and blood--without the milk of human kindness, the honey of
love, water from the crystal fountain, and the tincture of Gethsemane's
garden being added to take away the nauseousness of it--being handed
these poor deluding witches and wretches to drink to the last dregs,
failed to get rid of social and national grievances. The hanging of
thirteen Gipsies at one of the Suffolk Assizes a few years before the
Restoration carried with it none of the seeds of a reformation in their
character and habits, nor did it lessen the number of these wandering
prowlers, for we find that from the landing of a few hundred of Gipsies
from France in 1514, down to the commencement of the eighteenth century,
the number had increased to something like 15,000. The number who had
been hung, died in prison, suffered starvation, and the fewness of those
who were Christians, and gone to heaven, during the period of over 250
years, and prior to the noble efforts of Raper, Sir Joseph Banks,
Hoyland, Crabb, Borrow, and others, is fearful to contemplate. Hoyland
tells us that in his day, "not one Gipsy in a thousand could read or
write."

Efforts put forth to exterminate these Asiatic heathens, babble-mongers,
and bush-ranging thieves, were not confined to England alone. King
Ferdinand of Spain was the first to set the persecuting machine at work
to grind them to powder, and passed an edict in the year 1492 for their
extermination, which only drove them into hiding-places, to come out,
with their mouths watering, in greater numbers, for fresh acts of
violence and plunder. At the King's death, the Emperor Charles V.
persecuted them afresh, but with no success, and the consequence was they
were left alone in Spain to pursue their course of robbery and crime for
more than 200 years. In France an edict was passed by Francis I. At a
Council of the State of Orleans an order was sent to all Governors to
drive the Gipsies out of the country with fire and the sword. Under this
edict they still increased, and a new order was issued in 1612 for their
extermination. In 1572 they were driven from the te