now say something concerning their manner of life.

It would appear that, for many years after their arrival in the
Peninsula, their manners and habits underwent no change; they were
wanderers, in the strictest sense of the word, and lived much in
the same way as their brethren exist in the present day in England,
Russia, and Bessarabia, with the exception perhaps of being more
reckless, mischievous, and having less respect for the laws; it is
true that their superiority in wickedness in these points may have
been more the effect of the moral state of the country in which
they were, than of any other operating cause.

Arriving in Spain with a predisposition to every species of crime
and villainy, they were not likely to be improved or reclaimed by
the example of the people with whom they were about to mix; nor was
it probable that they would entertain much respect for laws which,
from time immemorial, have principally served, not to protect the
honest and useful members of society, but to enrich those entrusted
with the administration of them. Thus, if they came thieves, it
is not probable that they would become ashamed of the title of
thief in Spain, where the officers of justice were ever willing to
shield an offender on receiving the largest portion of the booty
obtained. If on their arrival they held the lives of others in
very low estimation, could it be expected that they would become
gentle as lambs in a land where blood had its price, and the
shedder was seldom executed unless he was poor and friendless, and
unable to cram with ounces of yellow gold the greedy hands of the
pursuers of blood, - the alguazil and escribano? therefore, if the
Spanish Gypsies have been more bloody and more wolfishly eager in
the pursuit of booty than those of their race in most other