But the gipsy not only is not municipal, but he is not called municipal.
His caravan is not immediately painted outside with the number and name
of 123 Laburnam Road, Clapham. The municipal authorities generally
notice the wheels attached to the new cottage, and therefore do not
fall into the error. The gipsy may halt in a particular parish,
but he is not as a rule immediately made a parish councillor.
The cases in which a travelling tinker has been suddenly made
the mayor of an important industrial town must be comparatively rare.
And if the poor vagabonds of the Romany blood are bullied by mayors
and magistrates, kicked off the land by landlords, pursued by policemen
and generally knocked about from pillar to post, nobody raises
an outcry that _they_ are the victims of religious persecution;
nobody summons meetings in public halls, collects subscriptions
or sends petitions to parliament; nobody threatens anybody else
with the organised indignation of the gipsies all over the world.
The case of the Jew in the nation is very different from
that of the tinker in the town. The moral elements that can
be appealed to are of a very different style and scale.
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