AN UNGRATEFUL PEOPLE.
GRUMBLERS the English have always been—'twere idle to deny it ; but never till lately was ingratitude reckoned ameng their sins. We are fallen, however, upon evil days. In vain do Whig noble and right honourable officials sacrifice themselves for the public weal. Disinterested benevolence elicits no thanks. The most arduous exertions excite no enthusiasm. No wonder that the susceptible allies of the Government inveigh against the ingra- titude of the age and nation. Pitifully does the Globe re- proach the People with unmindfulness of benefits conferred by
meats, which, if exercised in a profession, might have procured him an income nearly as large as that which he draws Irons the Speakership. Ile may, and if " of the right way of thinking" dues, quarter them on the public; but Royalty does the ciao:.
our paragons of Ministers. Lord JOHN RUSSELL is the "friend remembered not."
" Those who have cried out loudest, as in the instance of the wearing of side-arms by soldiers off duty, for the abatement of the nuisance, ought at least to say Munk you ! ' for the steps which hare been taken and are taking, in such matters, by Government."
The Globe is right. Lord JOHN, to be sure, gets some 5,000/. a year, with patronage and provision for kith and kin and connexions ; when he retires from office he will honour the country by taking 2,000i. a year more as a memento of the afore- said 5,000/. ; and in the mean while, he has the power to curtail Courtly extravagance and conciliate Colonial malecontents—how successfully he has used that power, let the Parliamentary Vote- paper and the Transatlantic intelligence of the week declare. But all this is beside the question ; which is, why the People are not dissolved in gratitude for Lord JOHN RUSSELL'S labours to unbayonet the military bullies ? Is it not a fact, that after only some half-dozen plebeians had been stabbed to death. and several scores wounded more or less (mere trifles in the view of a Home Secretary of exalted pedigree and aristocratical feeling!) Lord JOHN did write a letter of at least ten lines on the subject to Lord HILL? Is that fact denied?? We apprehend not. Did not an order issue from the Horse Guards to abate the "side-arms nuisance," in consequence of that letter ? It is unquestionable. Well then, if the inhabitants of the Three Kinglons are not content to be written dawn as ingrates, " in eternitate temporum fund rertun," let the voice of the nation be raised from the Orkneys to the Laud's End, from Darrs nane to Great Yarmouth, and "Thank you, thank you, Lord JOHN r' peal from every lip.
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