OUR NATIONAL MEANNESS.
ENGL1ND must confess to some touch of meanness in her character, at least in our day. As a nation we are mean, and we show it. In one week you may find several traits.
Here is Lieutenant Waghorn, who has confessedly rendered " eminent services " to his country, or to the Government thereof ;
he dies in harness ; whereupon her Majesty's responsible advisers I counsel her to bestow upon his widow—twenty-five pounds a year'!
We have countrymen, supposed to be still alive in the Northern- most region of frost and snow ; vessels have been sent out to res- cue them ; but it is averred that some of them are so scantily vie t tualled that they will be forced to return without long stay ; and certain it is, that for want of effective aid, Sir John Ross has gone out in a ship ill-manned, perhaps ill-provided in other ways. Our national servants have thought it becoming to stint expense in this enterprise !
From furthest Ind comes a dignified Hindoo, with presents from the King of Nepaul to the Queen of the British Empire, valued at a quarter of a million sterling. The presents are to be admitted duty-free, but the Indian magnate is told that his luggage must be searched. Then; he says, he will return whence he came, presents and all, undesecrated by humiliating explorations. Oh no ! cries the Treasury - admit him quite free, rather than lose what he brings. The admission of a distinguished pilgrim, coming hi so lordly a style, without official obstruction, was a grace beyond the inventive power of the financial authorities ; but when it conies to a retractataon of presents, the idea of Customhouse possibility won- derfully enlarges. We seem, with our trading ideas of economy, our pedantic exact- ness; and our routine, to be losing that freedom of action why/ belongs to generosity, the faculty of "doing things handsomely" This ought to be corrected ; and as, in this day, we provide every- thing by the instrumentality of committees—even " taste "—coed not Ministers, to supply the want, issue a Royal Commission' ommission of
Generosity, a Board of Good Feeling?
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