Cannibals all! or, Slaves without masters by George Fitzhugh

Author:George Fitzhugh [Fitzhugh, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Good Press
Published: 2022-02-16T00:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER XIV.

Table of Contents

THE NOMADIC BEGGARS AND PAUPER BANDITTI OF ENGLAND.

Table of Contents

Under various names, such as Proletariat in France, Lazzaroni in Italy, Leperos in Mexico, and Gypsies throughout all Europe, free society is disturbed and rendered insecure, by the class, a description of which we shall draw from the British writers. We do not hesitate to assign to the Gypsies the same origin with the rest. They are all the outgrowth of runaway and emancipated serfs. The time of the appearance of the Gypsies is coeval with the universal liberation and escape of the villeins.

If this diluvies of society is by nature vicious, nomadic and incapable of any self-control, it is obvious they should be enslaved. If emancipation of their ancestors and the throwing them upon the world without property or other means of support, made them and their posterity, from necessity, beggars, Pariahs and Ishmaelites, they should be restored to slavery, unless some better disposition of them can be discovered.

North British Review, "Literature and Labor Question," February No. 1851. The passage we quote is from a work of Mr. Mayhew:

"That we, like the Hottentots, Kaffirs, and Fins, are surrounded by wandering hordes, the 'sonquas' and 'fingons' of this country, paupers, beggars and outcasts, possessing nothing but what they acquire by depredation from the industrious, provident and civilized portion of the community; that the heads of these nomads are remarkable for a greater development of the jaws and cheek bones, than of the skull, and that they have a secret language of their own—an English 'cuzecat,' or 'slang,' as it is called, for the concealment of their designs; these are points of coincidence so striking, that, when placed before the mind, they make us marvel why the analogy has been so long unobserved. The resemblance once discovered, however, becomes of great service in enabling us to use the moral characteristics of the nomadic races of other countries, as a means of comprehending more readily those of the vagabonds and outcasts of our own. * * * The nomad there is distinguished from the civilized man by his repugnance to regular and continuous labor—by his want of providence in laying up a store for the future; by his inability to perceive consequences ever so slightly removed from immediate apprehension; by his passion for stultifying herbs and roots, and when possible, for intoxicating fermented liquors; for his extraordinary powers of enduring privation; by his comparative insensibility to pain; by an immoderate love of gaming; frequently risking his own personal liberty on a single cast; by his love of libidinous dances; by the pleasure which he experiences in witnessing the sufferings of sentient creatures; by his delight in warfare and all perilous sports; by his desire for vengeance; by the looseness of his notions as to property; by the absence of chastity among his women, and his disregard of female honor; and lastly by his vague sense of religion, his rude idea of a Creator, and utter absence of all appreciation of the mercy of the Divine Spirit.

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