'Your Majesty has already freed us from greater and more dangerous
enemies; finish, therefore, the enterprise begun, whence will
result universal joy and security, and by which your Majesty will
earn immortal honour. Amen.
'O Regum summe, horum plura ne temnas (absit) ne forte tempsisse
Hispaniae periculosum existat.'
CHAPTER XI
PERHAPS there is no country in which more laws have been framed,
having in view the extinction and suppression of the Gypsy name,
race, and manner of life, than Spain. Every monarch, during a
period of three hundred years, appears at his accession to the
throne to have considered that one of his first and most imperative
duties consisted in suppressing or checking the robberies, frauds,
and other enormities of the Gitanos, with which the whole country
seems to have resounded since the time of their first appearance.
They have, by royal edicts, been repeatedly banished from Spain,
under terrible penalties, unless they renounced their inveterate
habits; and for the purpose of eventually confounding them with the
residue of the population, they have been forbidden, even when
stationary, to reside together, every family being enjoined to live
apart, and neither to seek nor to hold communication with others of
the race.
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