The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1875-12-18


old world gave to the external pressure
upon 1.-THE tramping instinct has been
one of difficulties in the way of all wise
! legislation and social organization. The
early communistic method of land tenur,
helped to restrain it; for when group
| finally decided to establish itself in any
spot, the restless party must have become
the minority and had to submit to the will
of the rest. In the absence of public secur-
ity and the kings peace, single tramp ran
too many dangers, and a body of them that
| tried to live by their wits would be very
! promptly depressed. Early legislators, like
king Alfred, did their uttermost to give
| force to the existing constitution of society.
by requiring every man to show that he
was united to group in frank pledge, and
| all who were thus united were responsible
| for the behavior of each other. He who
had no place in any hundred or tithing,
was first imprisoned and then enslaved.
This policy seemed to effect the result aimed
at; the tramp impulse found vent during
| the Middle Ages chiefly in religious pill
grimages, and, as already said, in the Cru
! SadeS. The former were not always as
reputable as the company that Chaucer has
/ portrayed to u.s. nor did they commonly
make the hours pass merrily in the inno-
cent pleasure of telling stories capable of
repetition, though not always proper
They were often scenes of the widest license
and the grossest abuses; and it was not
uncommon to find rogues who had secured
whatever sanctIty accrued to visit to all
the shrines of Europe, without having
| added to their heap of merit any Christian
virtues worth speaking of. Those who had
gone to the Holy Land itself, won such dis
| tinction as lazy idlers on their return, that
the old English word for loafer-saunterer
is traced by etymologists to those who
had been to the Sainte 7erre.
| With the Tudors came in new era for
the British tramp. While everybody else
lost liberty under that vigorous dynasty, he
| regaincd his. The old English constitu-
frank pledge and its wapentakes, fell into
decay, and the principle of personal respon-
sibility finally superseded the idea of the
guild. The communistic land tenure was
destroyed by the Enclosure laws, and in
such way as to deprive great body of
| the people of their holdings, and to turn
them adrift on the world. Their numbers
were swelled by the worst of the monks,
whom the dissolution of the monasteries
had set drift; though we doubt whether
the poor lost much in the way of aims by
that dissolution, for the monks were always
rather their rivals than their benefactors
The back streets and alleys of the English
| cities were crowded with the dangerous
class-people who have little to gain by
| preserving the existing order of society and
its distribution. And at the same time
there spread over Europe new and strange
race, the very model of the new sort of
tramp. The Gypsies, whom our philolo-
gists trace to the very borders of Hindoo
stan, entered Europe in the beginning of
this period, and spread rapidly over every
country, from Muscovy to Spain and Scot
land. They still form the mysterious aris-
tocracy of the tramp-world- to-
gether by the possession of peculiar Ian
guage-a Free Masonry to whom none but
their own race can gain admittance.
| From this time we read of the vagrant
class as both numerous and dangerous.
| They kept whole countries in terror. They
robbed on the public highways. Statutes
punished "sturdy beggars" with death,
and country magistrates hung them by fiji
ties at time, without putting any effect
! ual check to their rogueries. at last a
royal commission under Elizabeth reported
the first English poor-law, not as correc-
tive for existing evils SO much as to pre-
vent their spread. 1t required the parishes
| to provide for the maintenance of their own
poor, while it re-enacted all the old penal
ties for the suppression of vagrancy.
But no poor law has ever been able to
rid England Of the vagrant class. 1t has
perpetrated itself to our own times, partly
by continual accessions from the merely
pauper class, partly by the propagation of
| vagrant children, who have stamped upon
them, from before their birth, the vagrant
instinct transmitted through several gen.
rations of vagrant ancestors. 1t has grown
with every growth of English pauperism,
| but it has not diminished in the brief era
of the latter's decline. 1t has become a
world by itself, with its Evolutionary laws
and customs, with even peculiar slang,
with signs and tokens which tell the mi
| tiated what to expect at every country
house, and which escape all other eyes,
| however alert. 1t runs on one side into
the great criminal class, who knew the
inside of the jails, and on the other into the
pauper class, whose Jail is the poor house.
Between these two palaces of public resort
tvibrates, frequently preferring the former,
because philanthrophy governs the British
treatment of the criminal class, while the
policy towards the poor is prescribed by
political economy and Mr.. Nautilus
| This, then, is briefly the history and
character of our new importation. These
are the people that throng our highways
and prowl about farm houses and country
seats to see what they can pick up. What
are we to do with them TO make them be
take themselves to some way of getting an
| honest livelihood? How are we, at least,
to make their like in Europe understand
that this country is not and does not mean
to be the paradise Of worthless idlerso
What has been done in England is chiefly
in the way of united effort; associations
have been organized in the suburban dis
tricts to furnish assistance to persons who
really need and deserve it, and the men,
bers of each bind themselves, by common
understanding, to send applicants for help
directly to it's office, in order that their
case may be investigated before any thing
is given them. This has the effect of dimin-
ishing the number who resort to any such
district, for the news Of this arrangement
soon spreads through the world of tramps,
and they turn their attention to more pro
missing fields. But it applies only to cases
| Uhen neonle are exnused merely tn the