n and habitual thief, and prescribed his punishment accordingly.
Notwithstanding the severity of this and other statutes, the fraternity
prospered amid the distresses of the country, and received large
accessions from among those whom famine, oppression, or the sword of war
had deprived of the ordinary means of subsistence. They lost in a great
measure by this intermixture the national character of Egyptians, and
became a mingled race, having all the idleness and predatory habits of
their Eastern ancestors, with a ferocity which they probably borrowed
from the men of the north who joined their society. They travelled in
different bands, and had rules among themselves, by which each tribe was
confined to its own district. The slightest invasion of the precincts
which had been assigned to another tribe produced desperate skirmishes,
in which there was often much blood shed.

The patriotic Fletcher of Saltoun drew a picture of these banditti about
a century ago, which my readers will peruse with astonishment:--

'There are at this day in Scotland (besides a great many poor families
very meanly provided for by the church boxes, with others who, by living
on bad food, fall into various diseases) two hundred thousand people
begging from door to door. These are not only no way advantageous, but a
very grievous burden to so poor a country. And though the number of them
be perhaps double to what it was formerly, by reason of this present
great distress, yet in all times there have been about one hundred
thousand of those vagabonds, who have lived without any regard or
subjection either to the laws of the land or even those of God and nature
. . . No magistrate could ever discover, or be informed, which way one in
a hundred of these wretches died, or that ever they were baptized. Many
murders have been discovered among them; and they are not only a most
unspeakable oppression to poor tenants (who, if they give not bread or
some kind of provision to perhaps forty such villains in one day, are
sure to be insulted by them), but they rob many poor people who live in
houses distant from any neighbourhood. In years of plenty, many thousands
of them meet together in the mountains, where they feast and riot for
many days; and at country weddings, markets, burials, and other the like
public occasions, they are to be seen, both man and woman, perpetually
drunk, cursing, blaspheming, and fighting together.'

Notwithstanding the deplorable